About once a month, 52-year-old Allen Burnett visits a California prison to mentor and offer advice to people serving life without parole (LWOP). As the co-founder and executive director of the reentry program, The Prism Way, Burnett motivates men inside to take accountability for their past actions, enroll in prison programming, and pursue an education. He also helps them create their own support groups. 

Burnett knows how best to help these men because he, too, was previously serving LWOP, which he was sentenced to at just 20 years old. 

During his time inside, Burnett was incarcerated across eight different prisons, spending 30 years of his life behind bars before his sentence was commuted by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019. He is now a member of the National LWOP Leadership Council, where he works with other former lifers to advocate for policy change. 

“My being home is practicing a life of amends to the people that were harmed, and also to uplift the people that are still inside,” Burnett said, explaining that he hopes his efforts inspire other men inside to think about the ways they can contribute once they are free. 

In California, someone can be convicted to LWOP for first-degree murder or felony murder. However, sentence lengths and conditions often vary by state and disproportionately affect people of color from low-income backgrounds who can’t afford representation to fight their sentences.

According to the National LWOP Leadership Council, more than 55,000 people across the country are serving LWOP. Two-thirds of people under 26 years old sentenced to LWOP are Black. Every state except Alaska sentences people to LWOP, and the U.S., which has one of the largest prison populations in the world, is the only country that sentences children to LWOP.

Ensuring that people serving LWOP are one day free is central to Burnett’s broader mission. He is part of a larger network of formerly incarcerated people, grassroots organizers, and other advocates in California organizing around Senate Bill 672, which would open parole eligibility for some people serving LWOP for crimes they committed when they were 25 or younger. The bill, which the state legislature is holding for consideration until next year, would only apply to those who have already served at least 25 years of their sentence. 

It’s worth noting that, as part of the bill, eligibility for parole would not guarantee release. Despite its strict parameters, SB 672 is already proving to be controversial, with some Republican lawmakers calling it unfair to victims of crime or otherwise framing it as a public safety issue. Burnett characterized these talking points as fearmongering that overlooks both the brutality of prison and the conditions that funnel people inside. 

“Actually phenomenal”  

On days when he isn’t working inside a prison, Burnett can often be found outside helping people navigate reentry. This could look like helping people enroll in a program for substance dependency, for example, or assisting them with job applications. For victims of crime, Burnett organizes calls and meetings to strategize around what resources might help them to heal. 

Burnett said he is driven to help people serving LWOP because he knows firsthand that this particular sentence rarely gives people the opportunity to make amends and change their lives. In part, this is because people serving life without parole don’t have access to the same kind of programming as those in the general population, said Burnett.

A recent Supreme Court case made it easier to sentence young people to life without parole. Advocates say the decision upholds injustice, primarily against children of color, by making them live in prison for the rest of their lives without the possibility of returning to their families and communities. California isn’t the only state considering reforms, and there are now national initiatives such as the National LWOP Leadership Council, the FreeHer Campaign, and the Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project advocating for fairer sentencing and the release of those who have served many years under LWOP. 

While reforms nationwide remain in flux, people like Burnett continue to advocate for those inside and do what they can to help rehabilitate and empower other men serving LWOP. According to Burnett, these efforts sometimes aid in helping to get sentences commuted. 

“They’re now at home, and they’re running organizations kind of like myself,” Burnett said of the men he’s helped get released from prison. “They are actively involved in policy work and give it back to the community, and in ways that are actually phenomenal.”

One of these men is Jarrett Harper, the founder and executive director of Better Days, an organization that is working to eliminate the pipeline that funnels so many foster children into prison. Youth in foster homes are 2.5 times more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system. Additionally, more than half of youth in foster care have been arrested by the time they are 17 years old, and more than 90% of youth who have moved to five or more homes have encounters with police. Black children are overrepresented in foster homes and disproportionately affected by these conditions.  

This work is personal to Harper, who was sentenced to LWOP in 2001. In 2017, then-Gov. Jerry Brown commuted Harper’s sentence. By the time of his release in 2019, he had spent more than 19 years behind bars. 

From the time he was 17 months old, Harper said he and his younger brother were in and out of foster homes, some of which were abusive. His first interaction with law enforcement came when he was 6 years old, and he tried to run away. As teenagers, Harper and his brother found themselves at a particularly abusive foster home; he said his brother began to experience suicidal ideation. Harper told Prism that he felt like he needed to do something to help his brother, so he killed their abuser. He was just 18 years old when he was sentenced to LWOP.

Harper told Prism that SB 672 is desperately needed in California and that continuing on the same path would only subject more people to “human waste.”    

“It strips the value that we all have as human beings,” Harper said. 

And many in the prison system are made to feel as if they have no value. 

Harper said that during his trial, the judge called him “irredeemable.” He set out to prove the judge wrong.

Locked out of much of the prison’s programming, Harper pursued educational opportunities on his own, and eventually, he convinced the warden to let him start a 16-week personal development program focused on integrity, faith, honesty, transformation, hope, and choice. According to Harper, 900 men signed up within two weeks.

“I invested into my transformation, and I saw that it was contagious,” Harper said. “When those 900 guys signed up, that told me that these guys who have life without the possibility of parole wanted something different. They needed an opportunity to actually invest into something.”

As the program continued and men shared their stories, Harper told Prism that he realized that many of them were survivors before they committed crimes. Many had been sexually assaulted as children, grown up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, or were forced to join a gang. 

“Part of that program was also helping these guys understand the importance of not just apologizing, but having empathy and developing empathy so that true remorse could overtake your life, so that could be used as a way to do something better, because you never want to make someone feel the way you made them feel,” Harper explained.

When Newsom commuted Harper’s sentence, it was a full-circle moment. His judge might have found him irredeemable, but Harper said the governor of California told him he was an “exceptional person.” Harper said he felt compelled to tell Newsom that he was merely a reflection of the other men inside. 

“They just didn’t have an opportunity to go before a parole board at that time,” Harper said.

Like Harper, in 2022, Dara Yin became one of the lucky few to also have his sentence commuted by Newsom. He was sentenced to life without parole in 2002 when he was just 19 years old. Yin served 20 years inside, the whole time assuming he would die in prison. 

Still, Yin wanted to try to make his mom proud by doing something with his life inside. He obtained his GED in 2014, followed by his bachelor’s degree in communications as part of a prison partnership with California State University, Los Angeles. Upon his release from prison, Yin finished a master’s program in education at the University of Southern California. 

Yin now works with API Rise, an organization that supports Asian and Pacific Islanders released from prison. Like Harper and Burnett, SB 672 would have helped Yin get released from prison sooner, since he, too, was sentenced to LWOP at a young age. 

The possibility of the bill’s passage keeps Yin motivated. He still thinks about all the men inside who provided him guidance when he was just a kid, their workshops and classes contributing to his change of course and rehabilitation. 

“I carry life without parole with me, and I know there’s so many brothers and sisters inside that, if given that opportunity, will do the same as me,” Yin said. “I want to be able to provide those that work with youth and other former incarcerated people better opportunities and education so that they can be pillars in their circles and their communities.”

Correction, Oct. 1, 2025: This story has been updated to correct Jarrett Harper’s first name in the sub-headline. Harper’s sentence was commuted by former California Gov. Jerry Brown, not Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor