You can do a lot in a lifetime
If you don’t burn out too fast
You can make the most of the distance
First, you need endurance
First, you’ve got to last

This blog will be about two things: criminal justice reform and endurance sports. There are more intersections between the two topics than most people would realize. Working in criminal justice reform takes time, patience, and stamina. We all have limited amounts of those qualities to draw from.

To tell you a bit about my background, I am an attorney and teach criminal justice classes at the University of Wyoming (UW). Prior to teaching, I spent roughly 20 years in the criminal justice system; as a public defender at first, and then a prosecutor at both the county and state levels. While working at the Wyoming attorney general’s office, I represented both the department of corrections and parole board. That’s where my interest in criminal justice reform came from, working in the legal world of corrections. Based on that interest, I took a job at the Wyoming parole board in 2007, where I worked for 10 years before coming to UW to teach. That’s also where I discovered the mass incarceration crisis that is going on in America, sometime around 2009. And it changed my life.  

I was born in 1972, and back then, the total number of people incarcerated in the United States was under 300,000. By 2009, the number of prisoners had increased by 700%!! – to the point that we now have over 2 million inmates in American prisons.^[i] In her report 50 Years and a Wake Up: Ending the Mass Incarceration Crisis in America, Ashley Nellis charts the path that America has taken to achieve this shocking increase.^[ii] The human population hasn’t grown by 700%, and for the most part, crime rates have generally remained steady over the past 50 years. 

There is a public misperception that crime rates are always rising, particularly the murder rate. However, if you look at the data since 1972, the murder rate has fluctuated somewhat, within a couple percentage points, but it has essentially remained steady. But if you ask many of the public, America is becoming a warzone, which is simply not true.

That misperception seemed to become a reality in 2020 when the murder rate in the U.S. rose by 30% from 2019 – the largest single-year increase in more than a century, and, as reported by the Pew Research Center, possibly the largest ever single-year increase.^[iii] Although it appeared that the murder rate skyrocketed during COVID, that assumption is false. The same report noted that “despite the spike in 2020, the murder rate in the U.S. remains below the levels that were reached in the 1990s, and “far below the rates recorded in much of the 1970s and 1980s.” (my italics)^[iv]

So if the crime rates really didn’t increase that greatly, why did our incarceration rates explode? The answer is complicated, and there were many factors that contributed to the alarming growth. Misguided changes in sentencing law and policy are reasons, without a doubt. That’s why I’m focusing my research and advocacy on sentencing reform, particularly as it relates to people doing long sentences, life sentences. 

Despite what the media may report, there is support for sentencing reform. I’ll explore that topic in an upcoming blog post, but for now I will close by saying that it will take another 50 years to push the criminal justice pendulum back the other direction – toward rehabilitation and restoration – and away from extreme retribution. Changing both hearts and minds about the criminal justice system will take decades, and the path will be rocky. This isn’t a hobby for me, but a way of life, a quest. Like I said above, working in corrections and learning about the mass incarceration crisis was a turning point in my life. The movement to reverse it requires physical, mental, and spiritual endurance. Check out the lyrics from one of my favorite rock bands Rush; they capture this approach to life in their song Marathon: “You can do a lot in a lifetime, if you don’t burn out too fast.” Peace. 

^[i] Ashley Nellis, “50 Years and a Wake Up: Ending the Mass Incarceration Crisis in America,” The Sentencing Project, May, 2024, https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/mass-incarceration-trends/.

^[ii] Id. 

^[iii] John Gramlich, “What We Know About the Increase in U.S. Murders in 2020,” Pew Research Center, October 27, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we-know-about-the-increase-in-u-s-murders-in-2020/.

^[iv] Gramlich, “Increase in U.S. Murders.”

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Mission

Wyoming Pathways from Prison is a trans-disciplinary and trans-professional statewide collaborative that aspires to support currently and formerly incarcerated people in navigating the waters of higher education and life more generally.

Objectives

Wyoming Pathways from Prison has four central objectives: [1] provide no-cost college credit, in partnership with Wyoming community colleges, to incarcerated people; [2] engage in valuable service to the state of Wyoming; [3] mentor UW students in teaching and leadership; [4] provide students with valuable real-world experience through teaching and assistance to the Department of Corrections.

I have been teaching courses and collaborating on Wyoming Pathways from Prison projects since 2018. Learn more about the program and how you can support it here:

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I’m an attorney and faculty member in the Criminal Justice & Sociology Department at the University of Wyoming. I began my career as a public defender and prosecutor in Carbon County, Wyoming, before working at the Wyoming Attorney General’s office, engaging in appellate prosecution in state and federal courts, in addition to serving as the legal representative for the Wyoming Department of Corrections. I then spent ten years as the Deputy and Executive Director of the Wyoming Board of Parole. I served on the Correctional Industry Advisory Board (CIAB), having been appointed to the CIAB by the Governor in 2014.

I’m a member of the Association of Paroling Authorities International (APAI), having served as Secretary for two terms and contributing articles to the APAI newsletter. I have also authored several law review articles on parole, restitution repayment, and inmate reentry.

Currently, I’m the Secretary of Board for the Comea Homeless Shelter in Cheyenne, Wyoming. When I’m not volunteering or teaching, you can usually find me on a bike or running throughout Laramie. I’m a triathlete, having competed in two Iron Man races, the most recent in 2022 in Arizona.

I’m a proud Wyomingite. I love fishing and rafting and exploring the beauty of Wyoming with wife, my two sons, and my three step-children.

My goal is to post as often as possible, but as you can imagine, I will have to squeeze it into an extremely full and fulfilling schedule.

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