From Prison Cells to the State Capitol: How Incarcerated Voices Reshape Nonprofit Advocacy

By Ivan Kilgore

An inside-out perspective on lived experience, storytelling, and nonprofit advocacy

For more than 26 years, I have lived inside a system that has often tried to define me by the worst thing I have ever done. But incarceration has also given me something that institutions rarely know how to measure: perspective.

I have spent decades watching programs come and go, listening to policies being discussed, participating in educational opportunities, and speaking with advocacy organizations about what it means to live inside the very system they are trying to change. One lesson has become increasingly clear to me: if you want to transform the system, you cannot leave out the people living inside it.

When a staff member lends me an ear, I often tell them that too many prison programs are developed from the top down. People outside the walls identify a problem, design a program, secure funding, establish measurable outcomes, and bring the program into the institution. Yet somewhere along the way, the person sitting in the prison cell—the person expected to participate in that program—is often absent from the conversation.

That absence matters.

Because lived experience changes the questions we ask.

It changes the solutions we imagine.

And ultimately, it changes the kind of advocacy we are capable of building.

Beyond the Promise of Earned Time

My own transformation did not begin because someone told me I could earn time off my sentence.

It did not begin because I was afraid of receiving a disciplinary report.

And it certainly did not happen because punishment suddenly made me understand the consequences of my behavior.

What changed me was much more fundamental.

I began to visualize myself playing a different role in my community than the one I had been playing before.

For the first time, I began imagining another version of myself. But once I could see that person, I also had to confront the enormous gap between that vision and my reality.

Who was I?

Who had I been?

Who did I want to become?

And what was standing between those two people?

Those questions became more powerful than any threat of punishment.

I remember making a similar realization about drugs and the choices I had made before incarceration. I did not stop using or selling drugs simply because prison authorities threatened me with discipline. Instead, I began asking myself a simple question:

“Why?”

Why do I do this?

Is it because I am trying to fit in?

Is it because I believe this is the only way I can make money?

Why do I feel the need to fit in?

Is there another way?

Once I started asking those questions, they created more questions.

And those questions eventually changed the way I understood myself.

Over the course of 26 years, that process of questioning became a form of education. Education was no longer simply about earning a certificate, completing a course, or accumulating credits. It became about learning how to see possibilities that I could not previously see.

That distinction is important for nonprofits working inside prisons.

If we only measure success by participation, completion rates, certificates, or earned time credits, we may miss the transformation happening underneath the numbers.

Sometimes the most important outcome of a program is a question.

Why?

Sometimes it is the realization that another life is possible.

Sometimes it is the moment when an incarcerated person begins to see themselves not merely as someone being punished, but as someone capable of contributing to their community.

From Personal Questions to Collective Advocacy

The questions I was asking myself eventually began shaping the conversations I was having with advocacy groups.

Over the years, I have been fortunate to watch those conversations evolve beyond individual transformation and become the foundation for broader advocacy campaigns.

Build Community, No Prisons!

Until Every Prison Is a Library!

Rebuilding the Community from Within the Community!

End Death by Incarceration!

House Keys, Not Handcuffs!

Educate to Literate!

These slogans are more than campaign language to me.

They represent ideas that emerge when people closest to incarceration are given the opportunity to articulate what they see, experience, and imagine.

This is the power of inside-out organizing.

The people inside are not simply recipients of reform. We are participants in defining what reform should look like.

That distinction changes everything.

When nonprofits create space for incarcerated people to contribute their experiences, they gain access to a body of knowledge that cannot be replicated through statistics alone. Data can tell you how many people lose professional licenses after conviction. But a person sitting in a prison medical holding tank can tell you what that loss actually means.

A report can explain barriers to employment.

A formerly licensed contractor can tell you what it feels like to spend decades building homes and then lose the ability to legally practice the trade that defined your identity.

Policy can identify a problem.

A story can make people understand why that problem matters.

The Story From the Holding Tank

Just last week, I was sitting in a medical holding tank.

The room was buzzing with conversation. Much of it was the same old prison jargon I have heard throughout my years of incarceration.

But somewhere in the middle of all that noise was an older prisoner, probably in his early sixties, talking about his life in construction.

He had been in the business since he was 17.

He had built homes from the ground up.

Construction was not simply a job. It was a craft, a livelihood, an identity, and a contribution to his community.

But he had lost his contractor’s license as a result of his conviction.

I might have heard that story and simply thought, “That’s unfortunate.”

But a few days later, I was sitting in an advocacy circle with fellow prisoners discussing the power of storytelling to shape policy.

And that man’s story came back to me.

Suddenly, his experience became more than an individual tragedy.

It became a potential policy question.

What happens when a conviction permanently eliminates someone’s ability to practice a legitimate profession?

What happens to the skills they developed?

What happens to their ability to rebuild their lives?

And what happens to communities when people with decades of professional experience are prevented from using those skills?

The story from the holding tank had become part of an advocacy conversation.

That is the magic of possibility.

It is how a conversation between prisoners can eventually become a conversation with policymakers.

It is how an experience inside a prison can travel beyond the prison walls and eventually reach a state capital.

The Incarcerated Person as Knowledge Producer

For nonprofits, one of the most important shifts is recognizing incarcerated people not merely as program participants but as knowledge producers.

We know things because we live them.

We understand the unintended consequences of policies because we experience them.

We know when a program sounds good on paper but fails in practice.

We know the difference between a program designed for us and a program designed with us.

And we know that language matters.

The difference between saying “we are helping incarcerated people” and saying “we are organizing with incarcerated people” is not merely semantic. It reflects an entirely different relationship to power.

The first places the organization at the center.

The second recognizes that incarcerated people already possess knowledge, leadership, creativity, and solutions.

This is why inside-out organizing is so important.

It creates a bridge between people living inside institutions and people working outside them.

But a bridge is only useful if people are willing to cross it in both directions.

From Prison Cells to Sacramento

I think about this every day.

I sit in a prison cell and watch the population come and go. I hear stories from men who, at first glance, you would never imagine had experienced the extent of life they have lived.

There are entrepreneurs.

Parents.

Artists.

Teachers.

Mechanics.

Contractors.

Writers.

Organizers.

People who have failed terribly.

People who have survived extraordinary circumstances.

People who have spent decades thinking about what they would do differently if given another opportunity.

Every one of them carries information.

Every one of them carries a story.

And every one of those stories has the potential to challenge the dominant narrative about incarceration.

That is what I have seen happening through campaigns such as DROP LWOP and other criminal justice reform efforts over the past decade.

Ideas that once seemed confined to prison conversations have entered public debates, legislative discussions, organizing campaigns, and the halls of the California State Capitol.

Assembly members are hearing voices that historically were excluded from policymaking.

That does not mean every incarcerated person’s idea becomes policy.

It means something even more important has begun to happen: the narrative itself is changing.

Why We Created Zo Media Productions

This is at the heart of why we created Zo Media Productions.

Our goal is to empower system-impacted communities to build their own media and communications networks—to tell their stories, educate one another, challenge dominant narratives, and educate the broader public about the power of lived experience.

Storytelling is not simply about visibility.

It is about power.

Who gets to tell the story?

Who gets believed?

Who gets to define the problem?

Who gets to propose the solution?

And who gets written out of the conversation?

For too long, incarcerated people have been spoken about without being allowed to speak for ourselves.

Our work is rooted in changing that.

The toolkit for this month’s newsletter, “Media & Communications Guild for Nonprofits: Amplifying Incarcerated Leaders,” grows directly out of these experiences.

At the center of that work are the voices of the men and women sitting in prison cells, medical holding tanks, classrooms, dormitories, and advocacy circles.

Those voices are not supplemental.

They are foundational.

Building Advocacy From the Inside Out

Nonprofits do not have to choose between professional expertise and lived experience.

They need both.

Researchers bring data.

Attorneys bring legal knowledge.

Organizers bring strategy.

Communications professionals bring storytelling tools.

But incarcerated people bring something no outside consultant can manufacture: lived knowledge of the institution itself.

The most effective advocacy happens when these forms of knowledge meet.

When a staff member lends an ear, don’t just ask an incarcerated person what program they want.

Ask them what the program is missing.

Ask what the outside world misunderstands.

Ask what unintended consequences a policy might create.

Ask what success looks like from inside.

Ask what questions nobody is asking.

And, most importantly, listen long enough for the answers to change your assumptions.

Because transformation does not always begin with a program.

Sometimes it begins with a conversation.

Sometimes it begins with a person sitting in a medical holding tank talking about losing his contractor’s license.

Sometimes it begins with an incarcerated person asking, “Why?”

And sometimes that simple question becomes the beginning of an entirely different life.

I have spent 26 years incarcerated.

I cannot change the years behind me.

But I can use what those years have taught me to help change the conversations happening beyond these walls.

I can take the stories I hear and help turn them into questions.

I can take those questions and help turn them into advocacy.

And I can help build pathways from prison cells to community organizations, from advocacy circles to policy networks, and from lived experience to meaningful change.

That is what I believe incarcerated leadership can offer the nonprofit sector.

Not simply another voice at the table.

A different understanding of the table itself.

And when we finally recognize that the people most affected by incarceration have a role in defining the solutions, advocacy stops being something done to communities and becomes something built with them.

That is where real transformation begins.

From the prison cell.

From the holding tank.

From the advocacy circle.

From the stories we carry.

And ultimately, from the people who have lived the problem and are ready to help build the solution.