Across the united states, parole grant rates have plummeted in recent years due to political pressures and concerns that people on parole pose a public safety risk, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit that promotes criminal justice reform. Of 29 states surveyed in 2022, just eight, Massachusetts included, had grant rates over 50 percent. Kim Jones is on a mission to radically increase Massachusetts’ grant rate.

“People are more than the worst thing they’ve ever done,” says Jones, who in 2023 founded the Massachusetts Parole Preparation Partnership (MPPP), which helps people in prison through the parole hearing process and with reentry into public life. “The people we work with have complex lives and histories of severe trauma. We aim to collaborate with and assist them as they prepare to tell the parole board the story of who they were, who they are and what their dreams for a life outside of prison look like.”

MPPP matches teams of two volunteers, called partners — typically community members who aren’t lawyers — with parole petitioners. Partners are trained by experienced parole attorneys and then meet with parole petitioners, in person and via Zoom, for up to 18 months prior to the petitioner’s hearing.

Together, partners and petitioners craft parole plans, obtain letters of support, identify housing and employment opportunities — and perhaps most importantly, partners help petitioners tell their personal stories. The collaboration doesn’t end with release. “Our hope is that these relationships continue,” Jones says.

Partners are supervised by experienced parole attorneys, including Jones, who works as a private attorney, taking assigned parole cases through the Committee for Public Counsel Services; Ryan Schiff ’03, a litigator at Strehorn Ryan & Hoose; and Rebecca Rose ’02, who handles criminal appeals and post-conviction work for incarcerated people serving life sentences. Andrea Jeglum ’22, a Boston customs and international trade attorney, also participates in the program as a partner.

“I believe that we incarcerate too many people, for too long, for too little reason,” Rose says. “It’s extremely gratifying to help prisoners get released to parole supervision and start new lives.”

Jones’ efforts are largely shaped by her participation in Northeastern Law’s Prisoners’ Rights Clinic, launched in 1979 to provide incarcerated people free legal assistance on everything from disciplinary charges to parole applications. Under faculty supervision, Jones advocated for a man seeking parole. Although her efforts didn’t secure his release, the experience was “deeply formative,” she says. “I was bearing witness to someone’s life experience. I was a listening ear to somebody who had not been listened to; that felt really important to me.”

After reading a 2019 article in The New Yorker that described New York’s more-than-decade-old Parole Preparation Project, Jones got the idea for MPPP. Many incarcerated people must prepare for parole hearings without legal help or support of any kind, Jones says.

“Kim designs trainings for the partners in the community, she raises money for expenses and she set up a board of directors made up of presently and formerly incarcerated people as well as concerned community members,” says Patricia Garin ’84, who co-directs the Prisoners’ Rights Clinic in addition to serving as of counsel with Shapiro & Teitelbaum, as a board member with MPPP and as board chair of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, among other activities. “MPPP is successful because it is driven by the passion of the people involved, starting with Kim.”

Jones worked as a paralegal for legal aid organizations for six years prior to enrolling at Northeastern Law, not yet sure of her career direction. Going to law school was part of a natural progression, notes Jones, who double majored in philosophy and women’s studies at Simmons College (now Simmons University).

“I was helping people get public benefits and public housing, and I wanted to take it to the next level,” she says. “I’ve always been drawn to working with people who are marginalized or whose voices have been erased in some way. I want to use my privilege to lift up their voices.”

 

I’ve always been drawn to working with people who are marginalized or whose voices have been erased in some way.

— Kim Jones ’11