Kim Kardashian is continuing her passionate work toward helping people caught up in the prison system with unfair sentences. The reality star and beauty mogul joined Jason Flom on his podcast Wrongful Convictionto talk about mandatory sentencing laws, working with the White House, and the cases she’s looking to work on following her success with getting clemency for Alice Marie Johnson.
One of the cases Kim is currently focused on is that of 30-year-old Chris Young, who was sentenced to life in prison after being arrested for marijuana and cocaine possession in 2010. “Yesterday, I had a call with a gentleman that’s in prison for a drug case—got life. It’s so unfair. He’s 30 years old. He’s been in for almost 10 years,” she said. Listen below:
Young is not eligible for parole, thanks to mandatory sentencing regulations. Kim explained that the judge who sentenced him for possession later resigned after being forced to dole out such a harsh sentence. “I was on the phone with the judge that sentenced him to life, who resigned because he had never been on the side of having to do something so unfair, and now he is fighting [alongside] us to get [Young] out,” she said.
But Young is not the only person Kim is working with. Earlier this year, she told reporters she’d been visiting prisons to talk with inmates, but on the podcast she explained how helping people individually isn’t enough. “I got a list of some people I was going to meet with,” she said. “What’s on paper and what’s in person is so different, and that is the hard part. You obviously can’t meet everyone...the laws really have to change.”
Kim was able to get clemency for Alice Marie Johnson, who had been in an Alabama prison since 1996 serving a life sentence without the chance for parole for a first-time, non-violent drug offense. She did this by cozying up with Donald Trump, a move that garnered a lot of backlash, but also, surprisingly, worked.
Alongside individual cases, Kim says she’s working with the White House, specifically Jared Kushner, to change mandatory sentencing laws. “I do talk to the White House a lot on this subject, with Jared Kushner, and he is really passionate about changing some of these laws,” she said. “Hopefully some things will get passed. I’m hopeful.”
