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Initiate Justice director urges civic engagement, highlights voting and prison-reform efforts
Summary
At the Sept. 5 meeting of the San Francisco Sheriff's Department Oversight Board, Adam Kane of Initiate Justice described the group's 'inside-out' organizing, work on voting rights for people with criminal records and legislative campaigns including Proposition 17 and firefighter pay for incarcerated firefighters.
Adam Kane, program director at Initiate Justice, told the Sheriff's Department Oversight Board on Sept. 5 that the Los Angeles–based organization trains and mobilizes people impacted by incarceration to engage in legislation and civic life. "We are a organization that's led around policy to influence policy, but using a method, an approach by educating the people not only on the legislation process," Kane said.
Kane described Initiate Justice’s "inside-out" strategy of running training programs both inside prisons and in the community. He said the group helped pass a series of laws benefiting people coming home from prison and highlighted Proposition 17 (2020) and Proposition 57 as examples of measures that changed voting and credit-for-programming rules. "We did pass a bill, which is called proposition 17 back in 2020 that gave people the right to vote, if they was on parole or if they are on probation," Kane said.
Kane said Initiate Justice has organized cohorts that travel to the state capitol to learn lobbying and bill-making processes and that the group maintains a large membership. "We do have over 45,000 members that are currently incarcerated. That is a part of the Initiate Justice community," he said. He also said the group has influenced or changed “over about 15 laws” and runs a 12-week cohort for outside organizers.
Board members asked about specific reforms. Member Palmer asked about efforts to remove instances of involuntary servitude from legal texts and about pay for incarcerated firefighters. Kane described a legislative push to require pay for incarcerated firefighters comparable to other frontline firefighters and recounted personal experience working in prison firefighting, saying he had been paid only “8¢” to go on calls and that his pay sometimes topped out at “15¢ an hour.” Kane said one legislative route is to target payment and working-conditions reforms for incarcerated firefighters as a way to combat exploitative labor practices.
Members also asked about career and licensing barriers after release. Kane said some licenses still require disclosure of convictions even after expungement, and he described coalition work aimed at shortening waits for sealing or expungement and connecting people to certifications and union opportunities where possible.
Kane recommended follow-up coordination with board staff and said Initiate Justice welcomes collaborations, training opportunities and speaking engagements. He provided a contact email at adam@initiatejustice.org and offered to meet with the board’s executive director and policy staff to discuss concrete next steps.
Kane’s presentation ran without public comment.
