Navigating Uncharted Waters: Establishing a Sentence Recall Process in California

• In Event: The Legal & Justice Landscapes of Incarceration

Abstract

This article explores a formerly incarcerated person’s journey through the inmate grievance system, ultimately establishing a formal process and procedure to request the recall of prison commitments, enabling thousands of other people to earn their freedom. Through this first person account of Joaquin Jordan’s experience navigating uncharted territory, we trace his interactions with this large bureaucracy. This account highlights the many fits and starts which characterize disputing with a prison system, including Jordan’s rejection and retreat to carceral death, and eventual triumph in asserting his personhood and legal standing to realize his freedom. We apply legal consciousness frameworks of “before the law,” “against the law” and “with the law” to describe Jordan’s journey for standing within this process. Notwithstanding the bureaucratic absurdity of parts of this navigation, it serves as a demonstration of a “man’s search for meaning.”

Authors

• Sarah Smith, California State University, Chico

• Joaquin Jordan, California State University, Chico