On a chilly winter’s afternoon, I finally found myself sitting across from a woman that I’d heard about my whole life: Aisha Elliott. Elliott was charged with second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life by the American justice system, and had also been my dad’s penpal long before I was born.

Hearing about someone your whole life but never actually meeting them is always a weird way to get to know a person. For as long as I can remember I’d been inquisitive about Elliott’s life and experiences. So, when the opportunity arose to ask her everything I’d been wondering over the last twenty years, in person, I jumped at it.

When reflecting on her sentencing, she expresses her feeling of hurt and how “in that moment, when they found me guilty, I already knew I was going to get twenty five years. The sentence itself did not surprise me. It pained me more than it surprised me.”

From a young age, the thing that always intrigued me about Elliott from her letters was her commitment to bettering herself and constantly improving while in prison. “I was a high school dropout but as soon as possible, I enrolled in classes and joined the college program to get my bachelor degree. I educated myself because I felt like something was missing for me to have been running the streets, carrying weapons and selling drugs. To get that street mentality out of my mind, I had to replace it with something else. I told myself: 'Aisha, you have to know something because the way you’re living is no way to live.'"

“I couldn’t imagine twenty five years in prison and not doing anything to further my education”

However, despite Elliott’s attempts to educate herself, former President Bill Clinton had contrary plans. During her time in the college program, in which she was two classes away from getting her associate’s degree, Clinton’s Crime Bill came into effect. “The bill took everything,” Elliott expresses with a familiar annoyance, “people in prison no longer had access to education. They just removed it all. The public and the government felt like we didn’t deserve an education. There were people in the free world working hard to get an education, so why were prisoners given a free one? It’s mandatory that you get up and go clean the toilet, or pick up cigarette butts. But it wasn’t mandatory to go and get a GED.”

Elliott and five other women decided to take matters into their own hands. “We met with the superintendent of our prison and discussed ways to rebuild the college program, in a way that was of no cost to taxpayers. We managed to get different colleges to come onboard with us to help fund the project. This college would supply the books, another would supply the computers, etc, etc.” They had their first college class in session in less than a year after the initial conversation and the same college program they helped to rebuild is still standing almost thirty years later. “I couldn’t imagine twenty five years in prison and not doing anything to further my education.”

As well as personal reasons to reimplementing education to prisons, Elliott also believed she needed to do something about the systemic oppression imposed by US justice systems, “Prisons are filled with mainly black, brown and Hispanic people in the States and by stripping back rights to education it means the cycle of minorities being imprisoned is more likely to continue. When I went for my parole hearings, I was able to sit before the commissioners and I could say what needed to be said, coherently. I got out on first parole. Education is a huge factor for rehabilitation and breaking the cycle.”

“It was always a struggle, it was fighting for basic human rights”

Elliott’s work on reimagining the American justice system didn’t end when she was released. She began to work for the ‘Square One Project’, an initiative which looks at why people commit crime in the first place. The project believes not in police and prisons but a rich community life that solves crime at its roots.

One of Elliott’s main motivations for joining the project stems from the treatment she received whilst in prison herself, especially as a black woman. “There are countless examples. I was in the elevator once, and this cop said something sexual, and I had to tell him, I’m not flattered by that, I’m offended. Everybody in there was susceptible to just being sexually harassed all the time."

“There was never enough of anything. My friend told me when she got to this medium security prison, they gave her one package of sanitary napkins, of which there’s 12 in the pack, for her entire period. She told me how she had to rinse them out, ring them out and reuse them. It was always a struggle, it was fighting for basic human rights.” The experiences of her and her friends within the American prison system led her on the journey to start to change the institution from both the inside and outside.

Candidly, Elliott offers her biggest lament she took away from her experience in prison. “When I look at my kids and my granddaughter, I just reflect on the profound loss of time I feel. I think about the chunk of time I lost and how there is no getting it back.”

“The world moved on fast. It wasn’t waiting for me while I was locked up and it’s still not waiting for me now. I’m just figuring out how to move with it.”