Breaking Barriers & Shining Light

A Newsletter from Living with Conviction

December 2023

Happy New Year to you and yours!

We hope that this email finds you happy and healthy and looking forward to the new year!

We are taking this year-end opportunity to introduce our first issue of Breaking Barriers & Shining Light. Each quarter, we'll share our progress towards our goal of securing economic and racial justice with and for marginalized communities of Washington State.

Our first big news is that we just received our IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status! 🥳

Our Work

Since 2018, our team of formerly incarcerated navigators, backed by attorneys, have helped people request that courts waive or reduce their court-imposed debt (aka, "legal financial obligations" or "LFOs" ), which was imposed at sentencing. For decades, that debt has been accruing at least 12% interest, including while the person sits in prison. To understand the impacts of LFOs, see Stories.

Using our Justice in Motion Web App to fill out the mandatory court forms, our team helps their peers prepare these forms. And for a few counties, we also file and serve the forms. You can learn more about rights to LFO relief here.

And new in 2023, we also help people impacted by the war on drugs to navigate the process for getting their unconstitutional drug possession convictions cleared from their records, i.e., "vacated," under the Washington State Supreme Court decision, State v. Blake. You can learn more about Blake and these rights here.

Hear from Lisa Giap, our Community Resource Specialist, about what it was like at the beginning of Living with Conviction to learn about her rights!

If you know of someone with felony LFO debt and/or drug possession convictions in Washington State, please give them our number: 206-307-3028. We can help!

A Note from Our Executive Director

As 2023 comes to an end, I am forever grateful to our inaugural Board of Directors and to our young team for their unwavering commitment to our mission. And we could not do any of this without our generous donors and partners. We thank you. 🙏

What started in 2014 as a fury inside me about Washington State's draconian law governing LFOs evolved into a fiscally sponsored storytelling project in 2016, adding a fiscally sponsored legal empowerment project in 2018. At the end of 2023, we now are a full-fledged functioning and impactful legal empowerment / storytelling non-profit organization of like-minded and dedicated individuals who remind me every day why we must continue to do what we do. ⚖️

Our criminal justice systems hurts people. Our system dehumanizes people and kicks them when they are down. And only if you have enough money can you get off court supervision. In this way, our system criminalizes poverty, disproportionately harming communities of color and with low incomes. We can and must do better. Please join us on this journey of breaking down barriers to both visualizing and realizing economic and racial justice. ~dke

Our Reach

We are a Seattle-based statewide nonprofit organization aiming to help people with criminal histories in all 39 counties of Washington State. As part of that effort, we prioritize eight counties with the largest communities of color.

Thanks to partnerships with the Legal Foundation of Washington, Washington State Office of Civil Legal Aid, Washington State Office of Public Defense, the Washington State Bar Foundation, and individual donors, this year we've helped people in 28 of our state's 39 counties!

We still have lots of people to reach, but we are getting there! If you know an organization supporting reentry, particularly in counties that we haven't yet touched, please do let us know!

The 17 counties where people used LwC’s Justice in Motion Web App to generate the court forms necessary to request LFO reduction.

The 28 counties where LwC helped people navigate the process of getting their unconstitutional drug possession convictions vacated and LFOs refunded, under State v. Blake.

Community Voices

By Jess Sylvia

One of the worst things about criminalization is that for those of us who are trying to do right, a record can keep us from building pro-social relationships, finding employment, or even housing. Formerly incarcerated people experience homelessness at ten times the rate of others. The unemployment rate for the formerly incarcerated is higher than the US unemployment rate during the Great Depression. So a life-long legal financial debt can inspire hopelessness. Continue Jess' story.

Our Impact

We began monitoring the amount of LFOs waived or reduced in July 2022, when our Justice in Motion Web App went live.

As of July 2022, to the extent we have been able to confirm, we have helped people get at least $1.8 million in LFOs waived or reduced - based on orders primarily in King, Pierce, and Snohomish County Superior Courts. (These counties make such financial information available.)

Our formerly incarcerated team did this. This debt relief was achieved without the direct assistance of our attorneys.