Discussion Topics: youth incarceration | narrative transformation | restorative justice| reentry | criminal legal reform | policy change | higher education in prison | racial equity, community engagement and community building
Travels From: Maine
Brandon Brown‘s expertise in criminal legal reform took shape when, at the age of 21, he was sentenced to serve 17 years in prison. During his incarceration, he was accepted into a pilot college program funded by the late Doris Buffet and her Sunshine Lady Foundation and obtained his associate’s and bachelor’s degrees—thereby becoming the first prisoner in Maine’s history to obtain a master’s while incarcerated. Brown was the primary author of a piece of legislation in 2021 that would eventually transform the State’s Supervised Community Confinement Program into an evidence informed reentry program that could no longer deny residents, specifically longtimers, based solely on their crimes. He was the first prisoner in the state to be released under the new program when the legislation was enacted, and in the first months of his supervision also led a policy team with system stakeholders to develop the DOC policy that would coincide with the new law. Since its passing, the Supervised Community Confinement numbers have more than tripled from where they were before the bill became law.
Possibly the first person in the U.S. to obtain review board approval to conduct human subjects research within the prison in which he was confined, Brown’s thesis was a narrative study of how stereotype, stigma, and marginalization affect prisoner narratives, uncovering the violence of institutionalized silence.
Brown also finished the first half of his PhD program while incarcerated and is currently a PhD candidate at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. There, his focus is on the ways in which narrative functions within the U.S. criminal legal system and social conceptions of justice.
He is the co-creator and co-host of “Behind the Door” podcast where he uses his lived experience in the criminal legal system and his expertise in transformational storytelling to explore topics ranging from prison reform, restorative justice, recovery, reentry, juvenile Justice, and the wide-reaching impacts of our broken systems. Brown is also the campaign manager for Maine Youth Justice, a project coordinator for Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, and has been adjunct faculty at University of Maine, Augusta and Colby College. He continues to teach college courses both inside and outside of prisons, including an inside out course in partnership with Horace Mann High School, called “Bridging the Divide,” bringing together incarcerated women and high school juniors and seniors to explore American Identity in the context of the era of mass incarceration.
