Why This Petition Deserves Our Attention

Change does not happen simply because we recognize that something is wrong. Change requires people willing to do something about it. Yaa Majesty Earth has created a Petition for Comprehensive Reform of the South Carolina Pardon and Parole Board, calling attention to how parole decisions are made and proposing reforms intended to make the process more informed, fair, transparent, and focused on successful rehabilitation and reentry. The South Carolina Board of Paroles and Pardons holds tremendous responsibility. Its seven members have the authority to grant or deny parole and pardons and make other important decisions affecting incarcerated people, their families, victims and our communities.

The petition asks an important question: Do members of the South Carolina Pardon and Parole Board have access to all of the professional expertise and information needed to make informed decisions about rehabilitation, readiness for reentry, and public safety? One of the petition's central proposals is the inclusion of a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist on the Board. It argues that mental health, rehabilitation, behavior, and readiness to return to the community cannot always be fully understood without appropriate professional expertise. The petition also proposes Interim Parole Boards within correctional facilities, bringing together qualified individuals such as case managers, mental-health professionals, chaplains, or other trained staff to help evaluate people approaching parole eligibility. The goal is to provide the Parole Board with a more complete picture of an individual's rehabilitation and readiness for successful reintegration. This is bigger than the incarcerated individual.

When someone returns home, they return to a family and a community. A parole system that makes informed decisions and takes rehabilitation, accountability, mental health, support systems, and public safety seriously affects all of us. Whether you have an incarcerated loved one or not, criminal-justice reform is a community issue. And this is where we come in. A petition sitting online cannot create momentum by itself. People must read it. People must discuss it. People must sign it. Most importantly, people must share it.

We are asking everyone who supports this effort to do something simple:

1. Read and sign the petition.

2. Send it to 3–5 people.

3. Ask each of those people to sign it and send it to another 3–5 people.

Be one of the people who moves it forward. If 10 people each reach 5 people, that's 50. If those 50 each reach 5 more, that's 250. If those 250 continue the same process, that's 1,250 people reached. That's collective action. PEACE!