James Swansey

James’ passion for policy reform is directly related to his background; he was sentenced to natural life without the possibility of parole at the age of 17. While in prison for almost three decades, he built relationships to cope with the pain and trauma of incarceration. Today, James is home, and he builds different kinds of relationships in order to transform the legal system. He actively advocates for legislative reform to give children and youth opportunities to succeed and thrive in and beyond their communities, just as he has. “I would love for people to see that there are a lot of different individuals and a lot of different things going on in the system that they are just not aware of,” James says.

Thirsting for Freedom

James grew up moving from one neighborhood of Chicago to another; although his childhood was quite nomadic, it was “always family oriented.” He remembers relying mostly on his mother and relatives for his needs. “Everything I  learned, everything I heard came through my mother and people in my family,” he shares.

As the eldest of three children in a single-parent household, James quickly became a caretaker to his younger siblings. “I helped my mother out a lot. She worked so whatever it was that I could help with, I did, whether it was babysitting, whether it was getting my brother and sister ready to go to school in the morning, or dropping my baby sister off at my grandmother’s house,” he recounts. “I always had that responsibility, just because of the fact that I was older. It was a necessity to take a lot off my mother’s plate.”

In spite of his household duties, James proudly describes himself as a good student who enjoyed school. “I got good grades. I loved going to school and participating in after school activities. I played football, I played basketball. I did all that while helping my mother take care of my brother and sister,” he says. 

Eventually, however, James’ additional family responsibilities became problematic and created a ripple effect on his life. He was ultimately expelled from school due to his tardiness. “At the time, I couldn’t say, ‘Well, I come late because I have to help my mother take care of my brother and sister.’ I didn’t want to say that,” he explains. 

As a result, James lost scholarship opportunities. “When I was expelled, I found out about all the colleges that were looking at me for football scholarships, and surprisingly it was at least 10, and two or three of them were actually Division I schools. Looking back, I see how big that would have been,” he says. “When it comes to education, I had so many opportunities that I passed up, just thinking that I was ready to do something, that I wanted to be a man and live my own life, and I wasn’t ready for it,” he adds.

James is candid about his thirst for freedom in his early teenage years. As he grew older, he became eager to hang out with his schoolmates and do what other teenagers were doing. After being expelled from school at age 17, James had more free time. “My mornings were about getting my brother and sister ready, getting them to where they needed to be, and then I had the day to myself. I felt free,” he says. 

In retrospect, James realizes he was just “itching to get away.” He explains, “I always wanted to leave the nest earlier, thinking that I was able to make adult decisions, because sometimes I was doing things that an adult was supposed to do.” As a result of this itch, James became engulfed in a destructive lifestyle. “From 1989 to 1992, I saw things and became involved in things that you wouldn’t hear from an average teenager,” he observes. 

Eventually, James left his mother’s home to take care of his own family, a girlfriend and two young sons. “Surprisingly, my relationship with my mother got better. I saw her everyday, because I moved right around the corner,” he explains with a smile. “I knew I didn’t have anybody to tell me what I could and couldn’t do, and it was a relief. I thought that’s what I wanted; I thought I would be able to handle it.” Being a father certainly brought him joy. “I loved being a father, I loved taking care of my kids,” James says. 

Unfortunately, James, who was only 17 at that time, was confronted with the harsh reality of supporting a family as a teenager. “I didn’t have a hold on anything in terms of foundation, planning, and stability.” Today, he is cognizant of the challenges facing him then, and his inability to make the right decisions as a teenager. As he reminisces, he can’t help but wonder, “who knows what it would have been if I just would have buckled down and got out the streets, got a job, got back to school …,” he trails off. 

James would never know. A few months after the birth of his second son, he was arrested for a double homicide. He says his version of the story never mattered. “The trial was just basically the facts of the case the way the prosecution presented them. There was also testimony from the police officers and my co-defendant’s friend. And that was it,” he laments. 

James was convicted of two murders and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Like other children sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, he was too young and hadn’t developed emotionally or mentally enough to fully understand the verdict. “I made certain decisions because I felt like an adult. But I made those decisions without knowing everything about life,” he comments. “When I actually received the natural life sentence, I didn’t really grasp it. I knew I was locked up, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere, but I didn’t understand the magnitude of the sentence,” he reflects.

“Being Locked Up”

The significance of James’ sentence became more clear when he arrived at Menard Correctional Center, a maximum-security penitentiary located approximately 300 miles from Chicago. There, he realized that he now had a label attached to his name. “I went from 15-, 16-, 17-year-olds surrounding themselves with the wrong people and making wrong decisions to being charged, convicted, and sentenced,” he recalls. “In Menard, you have the East and West cellhouses, and they are both “high aggression.” When I first got incarcerated, I was in the West cellhouse. With a fresh natural life sentence, I was assumed to be very aggressive. I had a red ID,” he continues. “Walking in line with individuals who had a blue ID or a white ID, I was the one that the towers were watching, that the staff was watching because of my red ID. I was a high security risk, I was a high escape risk,” he explains. Thankfully, things changed over the years. “Once you showed them that you were not as aggressive as you’re supposed to be, they would break your security level down and they would change the ID color from red to blue,” James says.

At Menard, James also became fully aware that he had lost the freedom that was so dear to him. “I hated being in the cell. I hated it,” he says. “I could be within the institution, still behind this 33-foot wall, but I just hated being stuck in the cell.”

James was particularly impacted by the experience of lockdowns, during which incarcerated people are restricted to their cells, without access to recreation, education or communication with loved ones. “I hated going on lockdowns, because you couldn’t do anything. You had to find other ways to keep your mind active while you were idle. If people knew we were gonna be on lockdown for at least 30 days, the first week was really quiet, because guys had to get into lockdown mode mentally,” James explains. Though primarily reserved for major disruptive events that threaten the lives of incarcerated people and staff, this form of seclusion soon became a common practice. James reveals that it was not easy to get used to isolation in this new, unfamiliar environment, and “I had to adjust on my own.” 

As James gradually came to terms with his sentence, he worked hard to make things work. “I told myself ‘I have this huge sentence. What do I do?’” he recalls. “This is already an environment where the majority of people are deemed violent and unfit for society. So now I find myself within this crowd, and I don’t want to get into it with anybody, I don’t want to do the bickering.” In order to reduce the heavy toll of lengthy incarceration, James built relationships. “I started figuring out what I needed, what would help me last. I didn’t want to be just there, like a flower on the wall. I didn’t want to be just a number. I started doing things. … I was interacting with somebody every day, whether it was a correctional officer, whether it was a counselor, whether it was my supervisor at work. And that’s what helped me,” he remembers.

James also endeavored to stay busy in order to cope with isolation and frustration. Working was one of the major strategies he used to avoid not just boredom but also to prevent being a financial burden on his family. “Having a job in prison eases a lot of the pressure people who are incarcerated deal with. In prison, nothing is free. When you get there, they say you get ‘three hots and a cot,’ that is, three square meals a day and somewhere to sleep. That’s not prison. That’s the farthest thing from prison,” he says. “Nine times out of 10, you’re probably not going to eat these meals. You probably don’t want to eat them. And the cot is just that, a cot.” He continues, “Commissary was the only other option, and all the prices were high so you had to have some outside support because state pay ($10/month) wouldn’t cut it.” “Commissary” is the store from which people who are incarcerated can buy food, hygiene products, office supplies, and selected electronics.  

At Menard, James was working in “the industry.” In prison, this word refers to a government-owned business that creates and sells products made by people who are incarcerated. Jobs in the industry are hard to come by, but James was able to get this position, which paid better and allowed him to be somewhat financially independent. In retrospect, he thinks this job was tailored to people with long sentences. “I didn’t understand that then, but I understand it now. They would rather have someone in a position in the industry that had a long sentence, because they wanted somebody that the supervisor was going to be able to work with for 5, 10, 15, 20 years,” he explains. 

Towards the end of his imprisonment, James worked in the health care unit, an experience that increased his awareness of the inadequacy of the carceral health care system. “It’s always a fight to get some kind of treatment, or get some kind of help,”  he says. James also witnessed firsthand the lack of empathy towards people behind bars. “I saw people going from healthy to dying from cancer, AIDS, or hepatitis,” he says. “I was able to see how nurses and doctors neglect someone who is in the penitentiary with a natural life sentence, who is not going home, who may not have a family, who … really doesn’t have anything, and who complains because they feel like they are not getting treated the way they are supposed to be treated,” he recalls. 

Getting Support in Prison

James believes a support system is one of the most important tools for surviving incarceration. “It’s easy to spot someone in the penitentiary who doesn’t have anybody, any support system,” he says. “They rarely take care of themselves: hair grooming, shaving, brushing teeth. They don’t really care because in their mind, it’s more or less like, ‘Well, I am not going to do anything but eat and come back to my cell.’” 

James was lucky to have a strong support system: “When I first got incarcerated, my grandmother was still alive. So the first three years of me being in the penitentiary, I was in constant communication with my family. I was getting letters from everybody. I was writing letters to everybody, and everybody was coming to see me.” Unfortunately, his grandmother died and “it slowed down.” Nevertheless, family was there for him, and he is grateful for the support he received. In addition to his mother and sister, “my aunt was in touch constantly. I heard from her at least twice a month, and I always heard from her on my birthday and Christmas,” he says. “I had a few other family members that would sprinkle letters and visits every now and then.” James explains he was not surprised by the decline. “I kind of expected it because the guys had already told me ‘Don’t get used to that because it’s going to slow down as the years go by, things are going to happen.’”

Leaving Prison

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that it was unconstitutional to give a mandatory natural life sentence to a child for an offense committed when they were under 18. This landmark decision provided a ray of hope to James and other incarcerated people who were serving the same sentence. It was like a “light at the end of the tunnel,” James says. 

James was first resentenced to 80 years to be served at 50 percent (that is half of the sentence). After another appeal, the sentence was reduced to 60 years to be served at 50 percent. By the time James had served approximately 28 years and was in the process of being transferred from a maximum- to a medium-security facility to serve the last 2 years of his sentence, he was granted clemency in December of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They Know Where I Come From”

A few years after his return to society, James seems to have found his happy place. But he has not forgotten the place where he spent his later teenage years and where he became an adult. In fact, Menard will forever remain engraved on his mind. “The first time I saw Menard, it was like a city within the city. I can never forget that image of Menard,” he says. 

For James, one of the biggest hurdles of coming home was building relationships. “When you come out of prison, your conversations change, your relationships change,” James says. “I didn’t come home automatically trying to be a great dad, or grandad. Even though these are my grandkids, they don’t know me; their parents have to introduce me to them.” Although James has had to be extremely patient, he believes that “the smallest thing was better than what I was leaving behind.” 

As James strives to know his children and grandchildren, he continues to nurture the relationships he built behind bars with people who have since been released as well. With his friends from prison, the dynamic is different. “With them, there’s no barrier. Anything they know, they pass it on immediately, and there’s no expectation because they know where I come from,” he explains.

Lobbying in Springfield

In addition to the joy of reconnecting with family and friends, another highlight of James’ reentry journey is his position as Restore Justice’s Policy Manager. He was offered this job after successfully completing the Future Leaders Apprenticeship Program (FLAP), which provides formerly incarcerated people with the opportunity to learn nonprofit job skills and advance social justice. 

As Restore Justice’s Policy Manager, James has demonstrated incredible leadership and a burning passion for legal reform. An interest, he says, that was not obvious when he was still incarcerated. “I’d never, never thought I’d be learning and doing the things I’m doing right now.” Today, he is proud to be a registered lobbyist in Illinois, which enables him to actively participate in legislative advocacy work. James is particularly happy he was an integral part of Restore Justice’s efforts to abolish Juvenile Life Without Parole, a sentence he once had. He is grateful he had the opportunity to share his own experiences in an impactful way to help Illinois become the 26th state to abolish life without parole for youth 20 and under. 

Read James Swansey’s Testimony: House Bill 1064

James pairs his work at Restore Justice with other advocacy work as a member of the National Life Without Parole (LWOP) Leadership Council, an organization that advocates to end the sentence of JLWOP/LWOP nationwide. He has embraced his new reality and is excited about all it entails, including building relationships with legislators, advocating for legal reform, testifying in court to help those who are still incarcerated, and facilitating legislative advocacy trainings. 

James is also eager to share knowledge about the Illinois carceral system. “I would love to show people what actually goes on in a facility where there are individuals that society feels are a threat to public safety,” he says. “Another aspect I would love for people to see is how an individual, who is serving time for a crime he says he did not commit, deals with this kind of situation for 30 years. I think it would open people’s eyes to a lot of things.” 

James continues to advocate for those he left behind. For him, one of the most important issues is education. “In maximum [security] penitentiaries, they don’t try to educate anybody. You get the basics, and some people don’t even get the basics. Some people won’t be allowed to get a GED because of their sentence,” he laments. “I think there are more things that can be made available for somebody who has to do time. Sitting in the cell, just staring at the wall, watching TV shows is not going to help them nor society if they are ever released,” he says.  

Another issue James is passionate about is the pathway to release. He believes no child should be sentenced to die in prison. “People should not be defined for the rest of their lives by one mistake. Science shows the brain continues to develop into the late 20s, and everyone grows and changes, just like I did. I am an example and not an exception. There are more individuals just like myself who have become better overall people because they have grown and made a conscious decision to do so. They should have the opportunity to be considered for release,” James says.