Free Minds is launching The Second Look Law: A Safer, Stronger DC, a compilation of stories of Free Minds members who returned home through DC’s “second look” legislation, the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act (IRAA) and Second Look Amendment Act, and are making extraordinary contributions to community safety across Washington, DC.
The future of DC’s second look legislation is currently being challenged in an environment where fear and misunderstanding often overshadow lived experience, and we want to make the real outcomes visible.
As conversations about IRAA grow more urgent, many of our partners are contributing critical research and data to inform this moment. What Free Minds is uniquely positioned to offer is a window into the lived experience behind that evidence. Because we walk alongside people before, during, and long after incarceration, we see the decades of work that go into real transformation and the impact that work has once someone returns home. The individuals featured here are not abstractions or statistics. They are our neighbors and friends whose lives show what accountability, growth, and public safety look like in practice. We hope these stories add depth and humanity to the public conversation and make clear what is truly at stake.
