Sunny Jacobs: Life Outside

When a person is released from prison after a wrongful conviction, especially when they were sentenced to death, families have no idea how to deal with them. And they have no idea how to deal with their families. The expectations and responsibilities that are thrust upon one another are a lot. People do not realize that every bit of life is overwhelming.

You need to get used to the idea to be able to walk outside, to open a door or to even cross a street without permission. The sensory system is absolutely overwhelmed with all the colours and decisions you have to make.

In prison, it’s simple: it’s time to eat, you eat your food. Out here, you have to go shopping, pick out what you want, cook it and clean up. The food doesn’t just come.

When I got out, I got no compensation from the justice system. Being wrongly convicted was even harder because you’re not entitled to the same services as a person who is guilty when they’re released. You don’t have access to probation services such as help with housing, job or even medical. They do not give you any help, but you still have a criminal record. I don’t think you should hold the criminal record against someone, even a guilty person. That is not right.

When I got out, no one would employ me. The stigma around people with a criminal record is a huge problem. Nobody wants to hire you and you cannot get housing, even if you say you were wrongly convicted: they simply do not care. They think all the time you spent in prison must have affected you in some way. So how are you supposed to even start? You do not have any clothes nor money. Luckily, I had family, but some people do not have that chance. That is why I realized we needed to set up a place for people to slowly accommodate to life outside once they are released.

We created the first Sunny center in 2014 in Florida, United States. A lawyer asked us to take a young man in who had been wrongly convicted. When he was released, he became very depressed and started doing drugs. He came to live with us for a month. By the time he went home, he was doing much better. That is how the whole idea around the Sunny centre started. We want a place for wrongly convicted people to recover from their ordeal and to try to find healing. What most people tell us when they go to the Sunny living centre in Florida is that not being burdened with anything, having someone there to assist and guide you is what they enjoy the most. They need someone who understands, provides them with healing techniques so that when they reconnect with their friends and family, they have a better base. We are training more and more people to do what we do because as we get older, we need to be able to pass that on.

We also want to establish more healing centres across the world. In Pakistan, an exoneree is trying to set up a Sunny centre to help people who have been on death row. In Uganda, we started the Sunny African Children Centre with another woman exoneree there. We send money for Christmas or try to find clothing and books for when they go to school. The situation for African children who have an imprisoned parent is horrendous. They are left out on the street, sometimes used as slaves and being sexually abused.

My son was 9 years old when I was sent to prison. He was traumatized by the way he was treated by the police and the fact that they did not believe us. He had to be put in special school after that. When you’re wrongfully convicted, sometimes your family is not supportive of you. They did not believe you at first and they initially thought you were guilty. Afterwards, they feel shame and guilt for not believing you. That can cause a huge break.

Children receive no help, no recognition, nothing! I was very happy to hear that the Quaker United Nations Office had started working on the impact of incarceration on children a few years ago . Unfortunately, there is a lack of organisations focusing on children of prisoners overall, especially for the ones sentenced to death. There are barely any support groups for the children. There should be more, even through Zoom, because they are so isolated. If you are the child of a person in prison and you would like to get help or even be there for someone else, you should be able to.

The system swings back and forth between punishment and rehabilitation. There is a clear pattern. When I initially got to prison, it was punishment, and then back to rehabilitation. They changed the name from the Department of Corrections to the Department of Rehabilitation, then it switched back again.

[Peter, Sunny’s husband: I think the reason why they keep swinging back and forth between punishment and rehabilitation is public relations. They do not want to admit that they have prisons, institutions of incarceration so they are calling it “the Department of Corrections”.]

The reason is also that it pays. In America, the prisons are listed on the stock exchange: it is a money-making operation. Once prisons become private, it really gets bad because it becomes about profit, and it is not about helping people anymore. For example, people with mental health issues get more heavily medicated so they are easier to manage. How much money can we make? How cheaply can we get away with this? Those are the types of questions the system starts asking itself. If we looked at this problem more socially rather than from a punishment point of view, we would do a lot better.

Social progress is always about making three steps forward and two steps backwards. But we have that one step forward. It has always been this way throughout history. I guess it is the human condition, but I think we are evolving. A comparison can be drawn to the war on drugs, it is a war declared on citizens, aimed at the poorer ones. War never solves anything. Why not skip the devastation, just start and talk?