Kim Kardashian is out to prove that she’s made a major life transition, from vacuous reality television star to serious criminal justice reform advocate — and if her latest effort is any indication, she’s well on her way.
TMZ reports that Kardashian is helping to bankroll a project called “90 Days of Freedom,” a legal team that uses provisions outlined in last year’s major criminal justice reform initiative, the First Step Act, to free inmates serving outrageously long prison sentences for minor drug crimes.
So far, the program has helped 17 people go free, including “Jamelle Carraway (who served 11 years of a life sentence on a cocaine charge), Eric Balcom (who got life without parole for a drug charge at age 29), and Terrence Byrd (who spent half his life behind bars on drug possession charges),” Complex reports.
All of the inmates targeted in the program are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, according to TMZ.
Since late 2017, Kardashian has employed her ample resources and public image to make changes in how the United States treats drug offenders. Initially, she compiled a high-powered legal team to work on specific cases, like that of Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother who was sentenced to decades in prison for drug possession, and that of “Jeffrey in Miami,” who was sentenced to 22 years for a “low level drug case.”
Kardashian worked directly with the White House to secure Alice Marie Johnson’s clemency, and helped to trigger President Donald Trump’s support for the First Step Act — a bipartisan effort led by CNN’s Van Jones and libertarian think tank, FreedomWorks, among others, to help improve and reform sentencing guidelines for low-level drug offenders.
It’s not known how much Kardashian is pouring into the “90 Days of Freedom” program, but she’s clearly trying to make criminal justice reform a big part of her life. Recently, she announced that she was attending law school classes in California and had plans to take the California Bar Exam in 2021.
“I told my dad years ago that I was really into criminal justice and he was like, ‘This will stress you out so much. You do not really want to take this on,'” the reality start noted on a recent episode of her family’s E! reality television series, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” “But I think now, having gotten so deep in helping Alice, I’m really motivated to get to know the law more and fight for people that deserve a second chance, like her.”
Don’t worry, though. Kardashian’s work won’t be all done behind the scenes. Variety reports that Kardashian has been working with the Oxygen network, which focuses largely on women-targeted television programming, to produce a documentary about Kardashian’s efforts at reforming the criminal justice system.
The documentary, tentatively titled, “Kim Kardashian: The Justice Project,” “will capture Kardashian’s efforts to secure freedom for Americans who she believes have been wronged by the justice system,” according to the network. Kardashian herself is listed as a producer, as is Bunim/Murray, the group that helped create the Kardashian family’s first reality project, “Keeping Up.”