Rod Blagojevich understands the criminal justice system better than most.
As the 40th governor of Illinois, Blagojevich oversaw one of the largest prison systems in the country, with tens of thousands behind bars.
And as federal prisoner #40892-424, Blagojevich has seen prison from inside the minimum-security prison camp at Englewood, Colo., that he has called home for several years.
Now Blagojevich wants lawmakers to see what he does as the Senate prepares to take up criminal justice reform. In a letter obtained exclusively by the Washington Examiner, the convicted former governor asks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to bring the Trump-backed First Step Act to the floor for a vote.
“It is needed to correct the harsh consequences brought about by mandatory minimum sentencing laws and by the cynically and politically motivated 1994 Crime Bill that, according to the Justice Policy Institute, resulted in the largest increase in federal and state inmates in American history,” Blagojevich writes.
To read the letter without some cynicism is impossible. The author, after all, is the slick-talking, palm-greasing convicted governor currently serving a 14-year sentence for 17 criminal counts, including a scheme to auction off the vacated Senate seat of former President Barack Obama. After Obama left office without offering a pardon, Blagojevich petitioned President Trump for clemency, hoping the Donald would take pity on an alumnus of “The Apprentice.” It didn’t work. At best, the politician-convict will leave prison in 2024.
But Blagojevich has undeniably changed. His helmet hair has turned snow white. His expensive suits are long gone, replaced by prison-issue khakis and work shirts. Most importantly, his fast-talking, self-serving demeanor of the past is notably absent from his letter to McConnell.
It starts out with fiscal boilerplate about how the $33,000 spent “every year to house a single inmate in a federal prison” adds up annually to “a staggering $39 billion.” It continues with an overture to New York Times best-selling author Michelle Alexander, who describes the prison system as the new Jim Crow which has “consigned an entire generation of young African-American men to needlessly long prison sentences.”
As readily accessible inside as outside the prison library, these observations aren’t new. What is new comes from the firsthand account that Blagojevich offers. It is his writing about the sad-eyed mothers holding the hands of their sons, his telling of the incarcerated fathers unable to hug their children, his account of an older inmate unable to mourn his wife at her funeral.
“For the past nearly seven years, I have served time with well over a thousand inmates. I have come to know many of them. While almost all of them are in one way or another guilty of the crimes they are here for, and should most certainly be held accountable, I have been surprised by what I’ve learned,” Blagojevich insists. “A large number of these men are not bad men. I believe a lot of them if given another chance can do good.”
And when you remember that the sentencing changes in the law are not retroactive, you realize that the legislation he is pushing isn’t likely to help Blagojevich. He isn’t writing to improve his own conditions. He is very much writing to apologize.
No, the governor does not apologize for his offense. Blagojevich maintains his innocence, writing in the very second paragraph that his sentence was “both unfair and unjust.” He admits instead a different kind of guilt in the final lines: “when I held public office I could have done better.”
Prisoner Blagojevich regrets that Gov. Blagojevich cared more about his rising political stock than the prisoners rotting behind bars: “Back then, I didn’t see the issue of crime and punishment the way I see it now. I saw a convicted criminal. Someone who did wrong and should be responsible for the debt he owed society. I didn’t look past him. I didn’t see the people who loved him and were left without him.”
Blagojevich asks McConnell not to do the same.
“I have since learned that behind most of the inmates I’ve known are good people who love them and who have been forced to live their own kind of nightmare alone and at home,” he said. “If we give up on these inmates, we are giving up on their families too. And we can’t let that happen.”
Perhaps prisoner #40892-424 will become one of the greatest advocates for reform yet.
