John Legend knows the obstacles of life after prison. He wants you to know them too

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Tens of millions of Americans have a criminal record or a conviction. Most people do eventually get out of prison or jail. But what happens after that? That's the subject of a documentary short film out this week called "Home/Free."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HOME/FREE")

ANTHONY RAY HINTON: After spending 30 years behind bars, you have no medical insurance. You have no place to live or no job. How do you buy food if you have no job? Freedom is not the way that I always thought it would be.

MARTIN: That's Anthony Ray Hinton, one of the people featured in "Home/Free," which was produced by several groups advocating for formerly incarcerated people. Singer-songwriter John Legend co-founded one of those initiatives called FREEAMERICA, and he narrates and appears in the documentary. And he started our conversation by telling me about members of his own family who have lived through incarceration and its aftermath.

JOHN LEGEND: I've had multiple family members and neighbors and friends I grew up with, people who I'm still close with, who spent quite a long time in prison. Coming back home is very difficult. There're just so many barriers that are in your way - laws and regulations that make it harder for people to come back and live a productive life, rules that make it harder to vote, rules that make it harder to get a home, rules that make it harder to even chaperone a school trip for your kids.

MARTIN: Yeah.

LEGEND: So there's all kinds of barriers out there that make it so that when people come home, they don't feel like they can contribute to society or be part of a community because there are so many barriers erected in their way.

MARTIN: How did you decide to talk about it? And was it hard to talk about?

LEGEND: I actually started really thinking about this issue because of my sister's baby's father. They had her first two kids together. He had gotten in trouble multiple times with the law. He had come from a family where multiple family members of his had gotten locked up, so it was kind of like a cycle that kept repeating. And I wanted my nephews to break that cycle. But part of them breaking that cycle was him being able to work. And seeing how many barriers there were in front of that, he reached out to me and said, you should look at this issue and think about it. See what you can do to help.

MARTIN: Why this documentary, and why now?

LEGEND: Well, storytelling, I think, is very important. When you're trying to make change in the world, part of the change has to be legislative and, you know, trying to bring these numbers down of mass incarceration. And I think a lot of convincing and a lot of persuasion happens when you're able to actually put real lives and real stories to these statistics and laws and all these things.

MARTIN: So the documentary follows several people's stories. And one of them we just heard from, Anthony Ray Hinton, who was wrongfully incarcerated for some 30 years.

LEGEND: Yes.

MARTIN: A lot of the people in the film did what they are accused of doing.

LEGEND: Absolutely.

MARTIN: Why do you think it's important that they acknowledge that they did commit the acts that they were accused of?

LEGEND: What I always try to convince people of is that it's good for all of us if these folks have something to do, something to motivate them, something to make them want to wake up every morning and be excited to face the day. We're all better off when these folks feel like they can contribute. That means they are more likely to be better citizens, less likely to get in trouble again and end up back in prison or jail. It makes us all safer. It makes us all more secure. So most of these folks did what they were accused of, but we can't punish them forever. And if we do try to punish them forever, we all lose out.

Sheena Meade, who's one of the folks in this story - she's leading a massive organization with a huge multimillion-dollar budget. And why would you want to lose out on her ingenuity and her drive by depriving her of those opportunities simply because she's been arrested before?

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HOME/FREE")

SHEENA MEADE: And at that moment, I felt like I was reliving trauma. If I check this box, what am I exposing my child to? What stigma am I bringing to my child? What stigma am I bringing to myself? So I decided not to go on that school trip. And it made me wonder, years later, how many other parents are not fully engaged in their child's education because they have to go through these processes.

LEGEND: Sheena founded the Clean Slate program. That program is all about clearing people's records once they've not gotten in trouble for a certain amount of time. It's so inspiring to see someone who took a negative experience she went through, flipped it into something promising and positive and helped a lot of other people who are in a similar situation.

MARTIN: You were talking about Sheena, how she was arrested, and then years later, she wanted to be a chaperone on one of her kid's school trips.

LEGEND: Yes.

MARTIN: And she couldn't because she was worried that then it would stigmatize her son.

LEGEND: Yeah.

MARTIN: And I thought that was really touching because people are always complaining. You know, parents - they don't do enough. And where are the parents?

LEGEND: Yeah.

MARTIN: How come they're not involved? She wanted to be involved, but she felt like she couldn't.

LEGEND: You know, Sheena will tell you the story about why she was arrested before. She wrote a check for $87 that bounced, and she was arrested for that. So imagine having to pay for that the rest of your life. And some folks, you know, admittedly did a lot more and a lot worse than her, but letting one offense determine your entire future - we need to have better space for forgiveness and grace, even just the practical reality that we need these folks to be part of society.

MARTIN: So I want to go back, before we let you go, to the you-part of this. I mean, you are one of the most famous performers in America, the youngest EGOT ever. I mean, you don't have to do this. And I was just interested if it's hard for you in some ways. People come to you for the joy and the fun. You're, like, dinner-by-candlelight guy. And so I'm just wondering if it's ever hard for you to talk about hard things like this.

LEGEND: Yes, you're right. I'll still give them that great experience that they want on date night. But I can't unknow all the things I know about what's happening in this country. I can't not recall the things I've read, the things I've experienced with my own family. And I care enough about a brighter future for our country and a brighter future for Black and brown people who have been excluded, over-punished and marginalized in this country. I care about that, and I care about us. And I want us to have a brighter future in this country. And one way that we're going to do that is by reforming our criminal legal system.

MARTIN: Singer-songwriter John Legend, he narrates and appears in the documentary "Home/Free." And that's spelled "Home/Free," and it's out this week on Amazon Prime.

John Legend, thank you so much for talking to us once again.

LEGEND: Thank you, Michel. Always a pleasure.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.