WASHINGTON—Twenty years after being busted for cocaine trafficking, Daryl Atkinson is the public face of the Justice Department’s efforts to help convicted felons re-enter society.
Atkinson finished college and earned a law degree after spending three and a half years behind bars for his drug crimes. Now, he’s joined the Justice Department as its first-ever Second Chance Fellow, helping develop a re-entry policy that the Obama administration sees as a vital component of its broader effort to reshape the criminal justice system and the handling of nonviolent drug offenders.
Atkinson, 45, is responsible for advising a federal re-entry council that represents more than 20 federal agencies and develops strategies for helping ex-convicts restart their lives. In working to remove common hurdles faced by felons, he says he’s committed to identifying people who, like him, found success after prison and he hopes to feature their collective experiences in an online digital “story bank.”
“We have to fundamentally change the culture about what we think about people who’ve come into contact with the system — and part of that is the human narrative, is the human story,” Atkinson said, adding that he also hopes to dispel stereotypes about those with criminal records: “They don’t have six heads and five arms.”
The department, which is pushing for more reasonable sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, sees the work as especially important given that roughly 600,000 citizens leave state and federal prisons each year and often struggle to find education, housing and jobs.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who oversees the re-entry council, singles out Atkinson’s story in public speeches about the re-entry efforts. The two were in Philadelphia Monday as part of National Re-Entry Week, where Lynch announced a series of measures aimed at helping ex-convicts prepare for life on the outside.
