To All This May Concern:
Good Afternoon. My name is Mr. Jason Mills & I’ve been incarcerated for 30 years of a Life sentence. As such, I genuinely thank you for the opportunity to have my voice heard.
To briefly share my story, I’ve been fortunate enough in recent years to of met some good people who seem to struggle bridging the person I’ve grown into from that horrible night all those years ago. And part of me would like to consider this a kind of compliment. For what it’s worth & for those of you who wish to know, I have every memory of every moment from that time in my life & even I still struggle bridging a connection to that kid. I could soften the edges any dozen of ways, maybe offer theories & rationalizations, but none of it helps. Not really. My guilt is Mine to carry & Lord knows I do. But, & I ask this realistically, what benefit is to be had placing that level of dark in front of myself every single day…? There are those who feel I deserve only to live in shame & guilt & suffering for the rest of my days, but this view remains as woefully ignorant as I was back then. Because no one person’s life is this singular. My great sin wasn’t just my crime but also my inability to appreciate the extent in which I, personally, affected other people’s lives. The Butterfly Effect. I really did not have a clue, much less a working understanding, all of us are so connected. A kind of solipsism, I believe. Because even now, 30 years later, I see I STILL affect other people’s lives & I will continue to do so until I die. Meaning HOW I affect others must be handled with a greater awareness & compassion, & wearing that deep shame & ugly on my sleeve every single day will only hurt more & more people. I cannot allow that. Believe me when I tell you there are levels to darkness, to anger, & shame.
Levels that are a fertile breeding ground for true masochism. And the only life-line here is seeing your own Power, your own influence(s) on others & understanding you cannot change the past. The future, however, is different. And once you can actually SEE what is good, what is Light, & realize that same Power to affect others can be positive…the world gets easier. Choices much more simple to make. Just this morning, right before beginning to write this commentary to you, I made my Mom laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe. And it felt nice. I hadn’t spoken with her in two weeks & she missed me. I heard it in her tone.
Life is a choice. For me, I choose to be better than my worst mistake.
In this same way, this is the evolution of many of those of us here. At least those of us who have had chance to mature & grow through a substantial loss of time. Respectfully, this Council is very aware of every statistic related to recidivism. This Council is very aware of how those who have served 20+ consecutive years have the lowest recidivism of any other catagory of offender. Politics alone make this a difficult consideration to honor when low level offenders who no one ever notices, those who serve only 5 years or less, have statistically reoffended 85% of the time within 5 years. That kind of repetitive cycle destroys families & communities alike. So it cannot be a simple matter of resentencing those of us here. The question becomes what beneficial demonstrations can IDOC provide to help build each Individual In Custody’s quality of character so that we, in turn, can demonstrate the benefit we can have on our families & community? This is a two tier problem requiring a two tier solution. Let there be a full range of accountability in the choices we can demonstrate over time. You have the analytics & the data that proves to you who has the lowest percentage of reoffending.
Speaking on behalf of my wife, my daughter, my mother, & everyone else who is touched by the lives we’re connected to, the opportunity for us to be resentenced is wholly life-altering. It becomes the gift of giving a wife her husband back, a daughter her father restored, & a mother her son returned. I am not here alone. And this fact remains both my greatest burden & my greatest strength.
I do thank-you, sincerely for your time & I pray you have the courage to help restore the lives truly trying to restore themselves. Respectfully Submitted, ~Mr. Jason Mills