This week, we had the opportunity to speak with Annick Janson, a key figure in the disability sector and the co-founder and director of research and innovation at Now and Next. Annick, a close friend of Wendy and Simon, shares insights into her impactful initiatives in New Zealand and discusses the significance of the Everyday Citizenship launch event she’ll host in February 2024.

Tell us more about your work in New Zealand and the aims of Now and Next.

A plan is the first step to receiving any disability funding, hence millions of plans are drawn around the world. However, the extent to which the plan includes inspirational goals is unclear.

I worry that some service providers think that ‘person-centred planning’ amounts to simply asking the person what their goals are through questions. Our combined decades of professional and lived experience have taught us that such direct questions are, in many ways, confrontational, albeit unintentionally and that often people or families are at a loss as to how to formulate goals. Ask practitioners how often people in a planning conversation have replied “I’m not sure — what do you suggest?” The reality is that people too often refer to professionals on the topic of goal setting.

That is what prompted us to co-design with families and young people the strength-based Pictability (™) game-like vision setting tool. The tool includes evidence-based elements, which in combination with participants’ creativity, produce unique results — it’s been truly game-changing.

Since 2015, we have trained peer-workers, family members and youth to facilitate these visioning sessions with over 2000 participants globally. Participants love the planning experience and comment on how much more authentic and aspirational their goals are.

We were, however, missing the implementation dimension that would support locating goals into a wider ‘good life’ framework. So, five years ago, I contacted Simon and presented to him the idea of embedding the Keys to Citizenship into the game. Simon liked the idea and off we went, co-designing and piloting a few versions. Last year, we started facilitating groups in New Zealand and Canada, using the Keys to Citizenship to inspire action.

How does the game work?

Teens and young adult participants enrol in our Quest collaborative game played in five sessions. Teams move through game levels, eliciting goals inspired by Keys and imagining how they would play out specifically in their life. As teams must collaborate to win, players support each other in thinking of examples about each Key, or identifying what Keys their goals advance, and what Keys would be next. By experiencing the Keys through action in multiple situations, participants gain new insights into their life.

What do you hope to achieve by hosting a launch event for Everyday Citizenship in New Zealand?

We want to build on these experiences through the Everyday Citizenship Book Launch for our inaugural family/youth conference ‘Stronger Together’.

The conference will bring together two groups which have been traditionally opposed. We want to foster connections and a sense of community among families, young individuals, and disabled people across all ages and ethnic groups. The opportunity to lead this conference has been driven by the dedication and passion of people across the disabled community. Young people are eager to seize opportunities for leadership development, learning, and personal growth, and be part of creating lasting change. They want to cultivate leadership skills and boost their confidence. Families will benefit by experiencing first-hand the enthusiasm and passion of young emerging leaders. For parents of young children, it will be a unique window into a future where their own children are welcome and encouraged to flourish.

We will use small group discussions around the Keys to foster an exchange of ideas, knowledge, and connections. Encouraging ‘intentional networking’ with family members will build foundations for strong partnerships, and ongoing collaborative endeavours. The objective is to create a platform for lasting initiatives that shape the future we strive to realise for our children, youth, and society: ‘Alone we get so far, together we get so much further.

It’s publication day! We sat down with Wendy Perez, co-author of Everyday Citizenship, and asked her to reflect on her experience of working on the book and how she had to fight to be taken seriously as an author with disabilities.

Can you reflect on how your carers weren’t taking you seriously until they saw the jacket of Everyday Citizenship?

I live in my own flat, and I have support from various carers who help me to live independently. I mentioned to one of them that I was publishing a book, and she didn’t believe me. I insisted, but she refused to take me seriously.

Then, one day when I got the jacket proof in the post, I showed it to her. Until she saw that the cover had my name on it and saw the Red Press logo, she thought I was just making it up. I don’t think that non-disabled authors get treated this way — and that’s one of the reasons why it was so important for me to write this book with Simon. It’s still so hard for people to believe that someone with a learning disability just wants to be able to do normal things.

Can you believe that after refusing to believe me, she had the guts to ask for a free copy? I think she wanted to take the credit for my hard work. Like it reflected well on her that I had a book published.

That’s not the only time people doubted that I am a real author. When we first started writing Everyday Citizenship, somebody said to me that Simon was only working with me because he felt sorry for me. But that’s not true. It was me that went to him with the idea for this book. I loved his previous book, but I also saw where it could be improved. It might have been about people like me, but it wasn’t written for people like me. And it didn’t talk about every part of our lives. That’s why we added a chapter on love.

Even though people who really believe in me could not believe that I was writing a book, they’ve been surprised by the finished product. Since then, they have preordered Everyday Citizenship and cannot wait to get their copy signed by me.

Everyday Citizenship is out now! Today, we chatted with Simon Duffy, one of our co-authors, and asked him to explain the broader sociopolitical landscape surrounding the book.

Can you reflect on how Everyday Citizenship fits into the larger picture of the movement and define what Universal Basic Citizenship looks like?

What Everyday Citizenship tries to do is remind us of what citizenship truly means. In its deepest sense, being a citizen has nothing to do with passports or nationality and, in fact, these are tools for exclusion, not citizenship. True citizenship is about being someone who takes seriously their responsibilities to themselves, to others and to the world.

Citizenship is empowering. Citizenship means we can be different, have our own unique gifts, and be free to create a life that makes sense to us. At the same time citizenship means being equal to everyone else, being someone with rights, but also someone who must play their part in creating the communities we need. True citizenship may be an ideal, but it is not idealistic. Everyone can be a citizen; it just takes work. Citizenship is a practical matter, one that requires application, resources and support.

True citizenship must be an inclusive citizenship, because as soon as you exclude someone from citizenship you immediately create a hierarchy where some people are more important than others. Exclusion from citizenship creates inequality and control; freedom and equality begin to disappear, and society starts to become a system shaped by elites.

Everyday Citizenship focuses on the individual’s story and the practical things we can all do in our own lives to be citizens. But there is also a political side to citizenship. If we want to take citizenship seriously and open citizenship to everyone, we must change how we live together.

If society took Universal Basic Citizenship seriously, then a good place to start would be to make sure that everyone had enough money to live. This is why I am an advocate of Universal Basic Income: the idea that we give everyone enough money (a basic income) and then require people to contribute to this system by paying taxes on the money earned above the basic income. If we created a system like this, then we could eliminate poverty and improve everyone’s life. This change would also bring many other benefits: people could live in greater freedom, do things that really mattered and make a bigger contribution to their community without fear of sanction or stigma.

This is not impossible. Some people (such as most pensioners) receive something close to a basic income now. Other groups, such as disabled people, would have a basic income if we eliminated sanctions and the extreme means-testing that people must suffer to receive their benefits. In fact, introducing a basic income would directly benefit about 80% of the population, and even the 20% who would pay higher taxes would still get the benefit of basic income as a universal entitlement.

Of course, this is built on the principles the NHS was founded upon. The NHS is a universal service, provided to everyone based on their needs and paid for by everyone through the tax system. Universal services free people from poverty and create the conditions we need to live as equal citizens. However, in the UK, we have not learned from the success of the NHS. We do not apply the same principles to other important public services. Social care, housing and education after 18 are now all means-tested; today, these systems force people into debt and many people can’t get the essential support they need to be citizens.

We could even go further and start to think about all the ways we could create Universal Basic Citizenship: a way of living together that sees citizenship as the foundation of a good life for everyone. For example, if we wanted all our children to be citizens, wouldn’t we change how the education system works? Wouldn’t the central task of education be to discover and support the gifts of the child and set them on a path to finding the best ways in which they can contribute to the world?

This isn’t simply about supporting people, it’s also about how we raise people’s expectations and their ability to contribute to the community. This is why advocates of citizenship also want to see a radical devolution of power to local communities, because this will create opportunities for people to make a difference in their neighbourhoods and beyond. This is why we should be exploring how to establish direct democracy for all citizens, so people can play their role in shaping their communities and taking their turn in leading community actions.

As my friend, Jon Alexander, has argued in his excellent book Citizens: citizenship, as a way of life, is the best alternative to the rampant consumerism sweeping the globe and leading us to environmental catastrophe. To be a citizen is to recognise that you have a role to play in setting things right, in reducing harm and creating a better world for everyone. Elites and the systems they control will never deliver the changes we need, only we can, and we begin by thinking and acting like citizens.

Recientemente, conversamos con Ester Ortega, la ilustradora de “Everyday Citizenship”. Nos describió su experiencia con el proyecto, cómo se involucró y qué le gustó de trabajar en este libro.

¿Cómo y por qué te involucraste en este proyecto?

“Todo empieza con una conversación” fue una frase que un amigo me dijo en un momento de mi vida. Me involucré en este proyecto por la relación personal con Simon Duffy, un amigo y maestro y un hombre que está transformando el mundo. Si Simon ve oportuno que colabore en algo, yo solo puedo y quiero decir, “Si”.

¿Qué fue lo más gratificante de participar en este proyecto?

Me ha encantado pensar y pensar sobre lo que aportan las claves de ciudadanía para la vida de las personas.

¿Puedes describir cómo fue cuando leíste el primer manuscrito completo?

Sentí que es una genialidad poder poder palabras sencillas y claras a un concepto tan abstracto como la ciudadanía. Sentí la emoción de tener entre las manos una potente herramienta de cambio social.

This week, we chatted with Ester Ortega, the illustrator of “Everyday Citizenship”. We dived into her experience with the project, discovering how she got involved and gaining insight into her feelings while working on this book.

How and why did you get involved in this project?

“Everything starts with a conversation” was a phrase that a friend told me at one point in my life. I became involved in this project because of a personal relationship with Simon Duffy, a friend, a teacher, a man who is transforming the world. If Simon sees fit for me to collaborate on something, I can and will only say, “Yes.”

What did you find most rewarding about being involved in this project?

I have loved thinking and thinking about what the keys to citizenship bring to people’s lives.

Can you describe what it was like when you read the first complete manuscript?

I felt that it was genius to be able to use simple and clear words for a concept as abstract as citizenship. I felt the excitement of having a powerful tool for social change in my hands.

This week, we had the pleasure of chatting with Clare Tarling, the editor of “Everyday Citizenship”. We delved into her journey with the project, finding out how she became involved and what it’s been like working on this book.

How did you get involved in the project?

It goes right back to my first encounter with Simon Duffy’s work: his essay collection, The Unmaking of Man. It was eye-opening to say the least, verging on terrifying. I then read the original version of Keys to Citizenship, which became a very useful reference point for many advocacy projects that I was involved in.

I kept in touch with Simon and his work over the years, until the opportunity arose to design an Easy Read version of a Centre for Welfare Reform report about chronic fatigue. Its publication led directly to more work for other organisations, at a time when I was just beginning to build my Easy Read design business.

Then the call came: “Wendy Perez and I have been working on a radical revision of Keys to Citizenship and we’d like your help with making it accessible.” I was surprised, honoured and a little scared, having never worked on a book before. I read the initial manuscript and could not say “no”! The topic of citizenship was so relevant and inclusive. Wendy and Simon’s words helped me to think about my own life, and to take steps towards making the most of my own citizenship. It is written by someone with personal experience of learning disability, but it is genuinely for everyone!

Can you describe your process of editing this book? Did you adopt a different or the same approach that you usually do when editing a book?

I must be honest here and say that I do not usually work on books! I am not sure whether “Easy Read” has found the world of book publishing but maybe this is the start. Most of my work is for the NHS, councils, charities and care providers. I more commonly adapt and design things like leaflets, strategies, meeting notes and tenancy agreements. The “keys” book was a fantastic opportunity to do something different and challenging.

My starting point was a collection of writings in a PowerPoint document, which Wendy and Simon had been working on for a while. They felt that they had got it as far as they could and wanted to bring someone else on board to pull it all together in a more accessible format.

Simon also approached Ester for the illustrations. I love her style — so simple and graceful, yet at the same time, embracing the complexity and diversity of our human experience.

I edited down the original file as far as I could, then set up the book in publishing software. This was the beginning of dividing the text into sections and pages, deciding which illustrations to use, and where we needed more images from Ester. I was not on my own through this process: we had regular team meetings to look at the latest drafts, to discuss changes and make improvements. It was truly a team effort and our Zoom meetings were the highlight — having the chance to bounce ideas around between myself, Wendy, Simon and Ester was a joy!

The day came when I felt that I had contributed as much as I was able to. It was time for Red Press to finish the job and get the book out into the world. I have learned so much through the whole process, from everyone who has been involved. It has been a real privilege.

Did you encounter any challenges or surprises while editing this book? If so, what were they?

The biggest challenge was significantly reducing the word-count of the original material, without taking away the essence of Wendy’s writing, which is so full of character and determination. She is a force of nature, and this had to shine through. It felt like a huge responsibility.

Imposter syndrome was also a challenge — Simon is a prolific writer, has a PhD and is well-regarded as an international expert in his various fields of interest. Similarly, Wendy is an experienced consultant, with deep personal experience and strong views. I felt a lot of “why me?” to begin with. It has helped me to develop more confidence in my abilities as an expert in my own right. I had to go through that initial stage of not feeling “good enough” and I am very glad to say that I am over it now.

The last big challenge was time. Two children, a full-time job in a local Advocacy charity, and a brand new business meant that time was very tight. The other team members had similar pressures. We all understood that this was just part of the context of the project, and I think our parallel jobs and interests added to the quality of the book rather than detracting from it. There was never a hint of pressure or impatience among the team, and I am grateful for that. We just accepted that it would take time.

You’ve dedicated your career to making information accessible to people with learning disabilities. How did you find this passion? Looking back at your career, what would you say are the key skills needed to do your work well, and what advice would you give your younger self?

As a child, my mum took me to day centres for adults with learning disabilities during the school holidays. This was because she was a single parent, and her job was as a Speech and Language Therapist. I had a blast, I loved going.

Well over a decade after that, on leaving university, I spent 2 years as a full-time support worker in 4 different residential homes for people with learning disabilities. After my positive childhood experiences of people with learning disabilities, this seemed like an easy and familiar option. It was a way to earn some money whilst I decided what to do with my life. However, it was challenging: particularly because of inflexible management and lack of training, which meant there was very little space to grow and improvise. Menus, housework rotas and daily activities rarely reflected the views and wishes of the people I was supporting. It wasn’t ethical and this gave me a great sense of unease every day. The frustration ultimately led me into Advocacy, instead of care work, which suited me much better.

Care work taught me a great deal about the day-to-day lives, thoughts and struggles of people with learning disabilities, giving me a solid foundation for literally all the work I do today.

The key skills I use every day when making Easy Read information are:

• Business: I have an MBA from the Open University, and this built my confidence in many areas, including marketing, strategic thinking, finance, and having the ability to talk to people of all disciplines in large organisations. I would not be a freelancer today without the brilliant OU!
• Design and technology: I have learned these skills as I go, in topics such as graphic design, web design, photography, audio recording and online marketing.
• Decluttering information: I love re-writing long and complex documents — this is the core of what I do. I can reduce 20,000 words to just a few clean pages of large print. I pull out the key messages, getting rid of duplication, detail and jargon. It helps to know the sector — my areas being health, social care, diversity and inclusion. I’ve also done some projects with arts organisations, which is great because I am a musician in my spare time.
• Discipline and focus: working freelance, with a busy family and lots of other interests presents many dangers. I have no boss to crack the whip! I try to work on my physical health via things like running, yoga and nutrition. These things help me to knuckle down and churn out the work, even when I don’t feel like doing it. Social media is the worst — I’d like to give that up for good!

I have no regrets about any of my career, I would do it all again, because even my mistakes have taught me so much. My advice to my younger self still applies today — I should probably listen to myself more! Here goes:

• Look after your “self”. Prevent burnout and avoid a scarcity mindset. This won’t help you, even if you think that working ridiculously hard now will pay off later. A strong body and a calm mind, however, is a good investment for the future.
• Focus on building and improving your relationships as much as your skills and knowledge. I’m still working on this!
• Take risks, but know what each risk is, and take action to prevent disasters, for example, by building up your savings before quitting your job, getting more qualified, or taking out insurance.
• Beware of hierarchies. Know who holds power, how, and why. Don’t ever let people who are deemed to be “higher up” than you define your self-worth. Additionally, don’t chase management roles just for the kudos. Leadership should flow naturally from competence in a particular skill, coupled with a strong desire to help others. Leading and teaching is a privilege and a service to society, not a status.
• Be visible! This requires confidence. Be proud of your work, and show it off, even when it is imperfect and may attract criticism. Constructive criticism is an opportunity to improve, and to show other people that you can learn and grow, and that you truly value their opinions.

This week, we sat down with the authors of “Everyday Citizenship”— Wendy Perez and Simon Duffy — and asked them to look back on how their writing journey started and what they learned along the way.

Wendy: I guess if we want to talk about why we decided to write this book, we need to go back to the very beginning, to the first version of Keys to Citizenship. Why did you decide to write it?

Simon: I suppose it all started when I launched Inclusion Glasgow — and the way we worked proved it was possible to help people with learning difficulties and people with very complex disabilities to live in their own homes, in their own communities, to choose who they lived with and to have their own budget and support.

That was the ’90s — at the time we saw so much was wrong in the UK with how people treated people with disabilities. We watched organisations put them in boxes, sideline them in institutions, and see how upset that made them. We thought it was better to treat them as individuals and to support one individual at a time in the way that was right for them.

I knew that with the right advice, families and social workers could do the same. Funnily enough, as I was writing, I knew I had to explain why we were encouraging people to work in an individual way. It was such a radical idea at the time. To my mind, the purpose of good support was about supporting people to be citizens. So that’s where my philosophy brain kind of kicked in, thinking about what a citizen was and why it was good to be equal, and why as a citizen you could be equal and unique.

What about you? You read the first version of the book — what did you think about it?

Wendy: I liked it because it gave people like me power. It shows them that they can do it, it proves they can be the same as everyone else. It’s not just about showing the people they can — it’s about proving it to the families who maybe didn’t know those things before because of what the organisations are telling them.

That’s why if you can convince the head of a service provider, then it will trickle down to the frontline staff. It’s like a ripple effect. The ideas at the top control everything else, and if they have the wrong ideas then people like me are in trouble. Their staff get trained in a certain way and there’s no flexibility around the person and their needs. So, a lot of times things aren’t working, and there’s no attempt to change things to be more effective.

But mostly, I liked the book because it proved I was doing the right thing. I mean, I’ve always had my own ideas about how I want to live my life and the kinds of things I want to do, and the book proved to me that I was on the right track all along. It made me feel normal.

Simon: And do you think a lot of people still get confused by the word “citizen” in the way I’m using it in the book?

Wendy: Yeah, it was confusing at the beginning, because I didn’t actually know what it meant. But now that I do, I can’t use any other word. It describes me and how I live.

To me, it means that I have the right to make choices in my life. And try new things. And yes, sometimes I make mistakes, but that’s part of being human, isn’t it? It’s about getting the support you need to do the things you believe in. And the person supporting them needs to listen and keep an open mind and encourage them no matter what.

Simon: You said an important word earlier when you were talking about the first book, and that’s “power”. I suppose citizenship is all about power in a way, isn’t it?

Wendy: Definitely. We need the power to decide what we want to do in life. Everyone has that right. People without disabilities use that power all the time. But when someone with a learning disability tries to do the same, then people start asking questions. Telling them no. Listen, sometimes I do new things and it’s scary, but I always I did them.

I’ll tell you this: I was scared when I first talked to you about Keys to Citizenship. It was a great book, and I liked it, but it took me a couple of months to get up the courage to tell you how it could have been better.

Simon: Do you remember what you said to me?

Wendy: Yeah — first I said that your book wasn’t accessible enough, and maybe you didn’t think about making it accessible because you don’t have a learning disability. The book was about people with learning disabilities, but it wasn’t meant to be read by people with learning disabilities. It’s meant to be an empowering book, but how can it be empowering to people who can’t read it?

Simon: It’s a fair point. The book was over 100,000 words, with really small, dense text and lots of jargon. You showed me how to make everything much simpler, much clearer.

And I’d even take your criticism one step further and say that it wasn’t even a story told from the point of view of someone with a learning disability. All the stories were from the perspective of the families or the service providers.

Wendy: The second thing I said was that there wasn’t anything in it about sex, and that was really worrying. Sex is hard to talk about, but if you don’t then people will be abused, they won’t know when to say no. They won’t know they’re allowed to say no.

Simon: And when you said that, I thought, not only is that true, but in that book what I tended to do was talk about community relationships and romantic relationships as if they were all the same thing. But they’re not. Funnily enough, my mum had the same criticism of the book. Did I tell you that?

Wendy: No, but I’m glad it wasn’t just me! Anyway, that’s how we discovered there are seven keys, rather than your original six.

Simon: And when we did, when we were able to focus on love, it helped me to see that love is like an endpoint, but also a beginning point because love is the foundation for all the best stuff in life.

I see that in your own family, and in the families of lots of other people with learning disabilities, it really does help if you’ve got a good foundation — if you are surrounded by love — because it’s the best guarantee that your life will go well.

Wendy: I guess I could also say that I learned from that first book — I learned who I am. I’ve learned I could do things in my own life and that changed me. It’s made me more determined. And maybe it meant that I had the confidence to write this book with you.

Simon: It’s been an amazing journey for us working on this together, with lots of nice things happening along the way. The first was Clare Tarling offering to edit the book and help us get to a first draft, and then Ester Ortega came on board and brought the book to life with her wonderful illustrations.

Wendy: It just shows that people, no matter who they are, people can work together and do amazing things. They can be different from each other, but they’re equal. We proved that.

Everyday Citizenship will be available in stores worldwide on 9 January 2024. Pre-orders launch 16 July 2024 exclusively from Red Press.

Want to keep up to date on all Wendy and Simon’s book news? Grab a seat on our mailing list — you can even help vote on your favourite cover art!

Stay with me here. Let’s talk about defunding the police.

It’s a campaign not about revenge, but opportunity.

It’s not about having no cops on the streets — it’s about asking them to do what they do best, and to only do that. It’s about reimagining the role of the police in our community. Because of imbalanced budgets across cities and states, the police answer calls about the homeless, the mentally ill, students with behavioral challenges in schools. Their uniforms are used to intimidate, and sometimes literally cage, already oppressed neighborhoods. Their names are invoked when a person of privilege — a white woman — disagrees with the presence of a person without privilege — a black man — in her community.

The campaign supposes what would happen if the money used to militarize the police, participate in excessive use training and pay out civil lawsuits for police misconduct were put to community services instead. What if that money was used for a social worker joining the team answering a domestic violence call, a man entering drug rehab rather than spending the night in a jail cell, or a restorative justice program reducing gang tensions in a tough neighborhood?

When communities are designed to funnel young men into prison, when our public and private institutions are designed to lock people out of good schools, high-earning jobs and safe homes, these overwhelmingly young black and brown men are locked out of society — and going to prison becomes the only viable career path. In a world such as this, yes, strong policing is the solution we as a society will point to. But what if we address the issues before the cradle-to-prison pipeline even gets built? Before a kid gets lost in a classroom of 40 students? Before the neighborhood drug dealer becomes the role model for the neighborhood kids? Before a kid picks up a gun to challenge a bully no adult will acknowledge?

While interviewing men for my book, Breaking Out in Prison, I asked Markey what influence his high school guidance counselor had on him. His response was “What’s a guidance counselor?”

My family are immigrants, and while my parents were educated in their home countries, their experiences did not prepare them to navigate the college admissions process in America. My sister and I were fortunate to have a high school guidance counselor who worked with us from freshman year on with picking our classes, SAT prep and college applications. Without Mrs. Curry, it’s hard to imagine how our family would have built a future for my sister or me. When I explained my experience to Markey, he quietly commented, “Yeah, we did not have anything like that.”

But imagine if he did. Imagine if Markey had an advocate to help him see college and employment as a future opportunity. Would incarceration have been in his future?

If the money that went to over policing Markey’s Brooklyn neighborhood had gone into strengthening the resources of his school, we might know the answer to that question. And since we can’t change the past or Markey’s journey — he did that on his own by earning his college degree while serving his sentence inside Sing Sing — we can do something going forward.

Our tax dollars could do more good at addressing our societal problems of right now. Investment in early years and community support can greatly reduce the need for police to keep the peace for decades to come. The millions — and in NYC’s case billions — spent on police forces could fund universal pre-K, literacy programs, after-school arts programs and garden clubs, investing in healthy bodies and minds. These public programs could, in turn, fulfill the seismic shift in breaking down the institutional racism found in the private sector. Ten years ago, a year ago, a month ago, there was no point investing in coding skills for young black kids because no one was going to hire them. But today, companies who need those skills are starting to purge their biases in their hiring and promoting practices, making these kinds of investments economically sound. So let’s give them the workforce they are looking for.

Let’s meet that moment. Starting right now.

How did you become interested in what’s often called the “cradle-to-prison pipeline” and the criminal justice system in general?

Years ago, Hudson Link, a nonprofit that brings college degree programs inside prisons in New York State, needed a photographer for a new annual report they were putting together. When I opened the email describing the assignment and time commitment, I was going to turn it down because I was frankly just too busy. But I haphazardly clicked on their website before sending the rejection email.

That’s where I learned that while the national recidivism rate is above 60% and NYS’s recidivism rate is above 40%, Hudson Link’s recidivism rate was only 1% at the time. With success rates like that, I knew their program was a game-changer and I had to take the assignment.

Why are you writing this book? How did you find your subjects?

A few years ago, I was driving around upstate New York on the way to photograph inside a prison with Hudson Link’s Executive Director, Sean Pica. We started talking about the arc of his life. Despite being a female, minority, New York City liberal with no personal interaction with the criminal justice system, up to that moment I believed in capital punishment.

On that drive, Sean told me if New York State still had the death penalty at the time of his crime, he would have been eligible for it. Everything stopped for me. I realized if Sean had gotten the death penalty, he never would have gone to school while serving his sentence, changed his values, come home, met his wife and have the family he has with her. Nor would he be running an organization that has already changed the lives of hundreds of incarcerated people in New York, thousands of their family members, and hundreds of thousands of citizens in the communities they come from, all while saving millions of taxpayer dollars.

My views on capital punishment flipped simply because I met someone and heard his story. I realized I was not the only American who could benefit from such an experience — challenging preconceived notions about someone by looking him in the eye and hearing his story.

Through my work with Hudson Link, I met a lot of currently and formerly incarcerated people. Some have developed into meaningful friendships.

When I began forming the story arc of the book, I knew a few of the men I wanted to talk to simply because I knew a little bit about their stories already. The Alumni Coordinator for Hudson Link at the time helped me create a list of men who had interesting stories who I did not know. HL put me in touch with them and helped frame the reason why I wanted to talk to them. From the men I did not know personally, the response was always “Anything for Hudson Link because Hudson Link changed my life.”

In the conclusion of the book, you write “After spending many hours together talking, one of the men commented that I probably knew more about him than even his wife.” What was it like gaining the trust of these men?

I started each conversation with either “Who was your hero growing up?” or “Who was your best friend growing up?” Because I was genuinely interested in their formative years. Rahson had laughed at my first question, saying that’s not what he expected me to ask. When I asked what he was expecting, he said “Something about my crime.”

Rahson had laughed at my first question. When I asked what he was expecting, he said “Something about my crime.”

I think that while other people are interested in “What did you do to land in prison?” and “What is prison really like?”, I wanted to understand their full story — growing up, inside prison and now that they are home. Despite the trajectory of these men’s lives, I felt that others would have empathy if they understood and related to their motivations.

From the onset, the men knew I was interested in them as a whole person, rather than their biggest mistake. Ironically, my focus on their thoughts and experiences made them trust me with the parts I was not focusing on — their darkest moments.

As a humanitarian photographer, you probably have a lot of exposure to how different interest groups and political players speak about the issue of incarceration. Why is it important to you that we hear directly from formerly incarcerated people?

“Ex-con. Felon. Inmate.” These words and others are used by people who have not been incarcerated to talk about the incarcerated. They are reductive, inhumane labels that stick because of their connotations. And these labels last a lifetime.

I learned this from people who have spent time inside. They prefer to use the terms “incarcerated” or “formerly incarcerated” because they are adjectives that describe a person’s circumstances — it removes some of the implicit blame and sense of permanence a term like “ex-con” assigns.

The most informed voice to speak about a community is the community members themselves. These are not my stories. They are their stories. No one else could tell their stories for them. For this reason, I very intentionally made sure the stories were told in their voice, including their diction, their slang, their grammar.

What stood out to you about the way the men talked about receiving higher education in prison?

For the majority of the men, not all, this was the first time they paid attention in school. Growing up, school was not a stepping stone towards the future. Most did not see college or a job as a next step. When I asked Markey what influence his guidance counsellor had on him, he asked: “What’s a guidance counsellor?”

My family are immigrants and while my parents were educated in their home countries, their experiences did not prepare them to navigate the college admissions process in America. My sister and I were fortunate to have a high school guidance counsellor who worked with us from freshman year on with picking our classes, SAT prep and college applications. Without Mrs Susan Curry, it’s hard to imagine how our family would have navigated building a future for my sister or me. When I explained my experience to Markey, he quietly commented, “Yeah, we did not have anything like that.” I was shocked that his school did not have an advocate for him. For what can be expected of a student without proper resources?

Something I found fascinating and inspiring about education in this context is that the students are not competing against each other. Like every other school, there is peer pressure. But in the context of the prison classroom, it’s inverted. When a guy gets a B, the other guys get on him, asking him why he did not get an A. They rally around him, helping him study and improve to earn the A. Instead of just wanting to be the best in the class, they see themselves as a team. If one succeeds, they all succeed.

Schools educate towards the middle of the spectrum, forgetting how different kids are motivated differently. Or simply not having the manpower or the resources to make sure kids don’t slip through the cracks. Hearing about what worked for these men as motivations to learn really underscored that reality for me. As Danny put it, “when you have a criminal mindset, you think differently.” You figure out the scam, the angle. For everything. Jerome turned his education inside into a game for himself. After getting two A’s the first semester, he set out to out-perform himself to see how many A’s he could earn the next semester. And the next. And the next.

One recurring theme you notice in these stories is the idea of young people who emulate what they see around them not because it’s a path they really want for themselves, but because it’s what they know; or, as Chris puts it in the book, “you don’t do what a person says, you do what they do.” Can you talk about that?

My Indian, immigrant, suburban community had certain expectations of their American-raised daughter. But those I spent my days with influenced my desires in ways the adults in my life never could. The classmates I admired were in student government, they joined the yearbook staff and cared about school spirit. Extracurricular activities that were foreign concepts to my parents. But that did not matter to me. I ran for class treasurer, became editor of the yearbook and a cheerleader.

It’s easy to see why I did the things I did based on what I saw around me.

The same is true for these men. They were surrounded by people relying on violence as a form of communication, selling drugs, not planning for a hopeful future. They emulated that which they saw. Same as me. Same as many other young people across the country.

Another theme is the experience of reentry. What stood out to you about their experiences trying to assimilate back into society and find work?

Because of my work in this field for the past decade, I was not surprised to hear the difficulties the men faced with assimilating — whether it was finding a place to live or obtaining a state-issued ID or even the first time Lawrence saw the internet. Each man had completed his punishment as dictated by the state when he walked out of prison. But I know society continues to dole out punishments by not providing tools or opportunities for the formerly incarcerated to create a new path.

Maintaining bonds with those on the outside is also a challenge, which of course affects their lives when they are released as well. Tayari Jones perfectly captures the difficulties in staying connected with loved ones on the outside in her book, An American Marriage. The system treats visiting family members terribly by making them wait for long periods of time outside the visitor’s hall, turned away for no reason, making assumptions or comments about the kind of women who are married to incarcerated men, and sometimes living hours and hours away from the facility where a loved one lives. All of these microaggressions test the faith of a loved one in staying connected and present in the lives of the incarcerated family members.

Did listening to these men’s stories make you feel more hopeful or more despairing about our progress as a nation on issues around mass incarceration?

I am more hopeful than what is portrayed in the press. As a humanitarian photographer, I am a solutions-based person. While I see the scale of the issue, I also see the work being done to change the trajection. Most of these men now work as social workers in prison reform, re-entry work or with at-risk youth.

After talking with a class of students at an NYC public school about making smarter choices, Sean was approached by a young man. The boy shared he was getting bullied and he brought a knife to school that day to exact revenge. He asked Sean to take the knife from him because he did not want to make a mistake. Sean’s presence in the classroom that day saved two lives: the kid who would have been attacked and the kid who brought the weapon to school.

I have to believe that these powerful stories are loud and strong enough to create change.

What steps need to be taken to create change?

80% of incarcerated men and women in New York State come from just 7 communities: the 5 boroughs of New York City, Buffalo and Syracuse. It shows how deep the issue runs in concentrated areas. And changing the prospects in these few communities would greatly alter the state’s prison system. 80% of the men in the book come from these 7 communities and even more returned to them as assets or credible messengers to put a stopgap in the cradle-to-prison pipeline.

The biggest policy idea that could affect system-wide change is bringing back Pell grants for higher education inside prison. Pell funding was taken away by President Clinton in the 1990s as part of the political stance of being “tough on crime”. Education inside prison dried up around the country, eliminating the possibility of gainful employment upon release. Without the hope of financially supporting themselves, the recently released are at higher risk of re-offending and thus back in the system, perpetuating the cycle of incarceration.

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