Voices Unlocked
We share unvarnished stories from inside America's federal prison system to touch hearts and change minds.
Voices Unlocked
The Power of Hope: How Second Look Laws Change Lives
What happens when a person with a life sentence is suddenly offered the possibility of freedom? Rob Barton entered prison at just 16 with a 30-year-to-life sentence, facing a future he could barely comprehend. Now free after nearly three decades behind bars, he takes us on a revealing journey through the psychology of incarceration and the transformative power of hope.
"When you're in a mansion, you live like you're in a mansion, but when you're in the woods, you adapt to the woods," Rob explains, capturing the essence of how prison forces adaptation. Without prospects for freedom, people naturally acclimate to their environment in ways that can work against rehabilitation. The mind-bending reality of prison life creates a parallel culture with its own norms – what Rob calls "bidding" – developing routines that make endless time bearable.
The game-changer was DC's Second Look Law, allowing those who entered prison young to petition for release based on rehabilitation after serving 15 years. This legislation created something precious that had been missing: hope. Rob reveals how this hope transformed not just his outlook but the entire prison culture, inspiring people to pursue education and programming they'd previously ignored.
Through powerful personal stories and conversations with others still behind bars, Rob exposes the broken promises of the federal parole system, which routinely denies release even when people meet all requirements. The contrast with second-look laws is striking – of approximately 150 people released under DC's law, fewer than a handful have reoffended.
Today, Rob describes himself as having transitioned from being "a product of to a creator of" his reality – embodying the core message that people are truly more than their worst mistakes. His story offers compelling evidence that rehabilitation is possible and that society benefits when we provide meaningful pathways to redemption, regardless of the original crime.
Join us for this eye-opening conversation that challenges conventional thinking about punishment, rehabilitation, and who deserves a second chance. Subscribe now to support our work advocating for those still behind bars.
Follow this podcast so you'll be informed when new episodes are uploaded (twice a month). Meanwhile, read more stories and learn how you can contribute to reform; visit MoreThanOurCrimes.
PAM BAILEY: Hi, this is Pam Bailey, co-host of Voices Unlocked, the podcast produced by More Than Our Crimes, which advocates for individuals in federal prison. And my cohost is Robert Barton. You're going to be hearing from him in just a minute. In our previous episode, we focused on how More Than Our Crimes came about, because Rob just got out after nearly 30 years in prison. But we're going to go a little bit in more in depth this time about just how Rob won his freedom and all the things that sort of worked against it. I want to start, though, with having you...So, you went into prison when you were barely 16 and you were tried as an adult and you've got a sentence of 30 years to life. I'm just wondering, when you first went in, you were so young, maybe you didn't realize the implications of that. But did it feel like it could be for forever?
ROBERT BARTON: You're 16 years old, you're a child and 30 years seemed like forever. Like, you ain't even lived 30 years. You lived a little bit more than half of 30 years. So it's like you can't see that date and it's like, the world for real. It is like my life is over and I'm just going to live life however. But I don't think that I ever really accepted the 30 years or say, "Oh, I’m gonna end up doing 30 years." I couldn't see that far. So it's like, "I'm going to get out of jail. I'm going to work on my case."
PAM: In a minute, we're going to talk about the fact that DC is one of the few states in the country that has adopted a second look law, which allows people who went into prison when they were young -- it may be under 18 or under 25, which is what it should be -- and were in for a certain number of years in prison, in DC it is 15 ,to petition for release based and rehabilitation. But before that law was passed, and all of a sudden people realized there's a chance to get out, it seemed like prison was your life. I remember one time you told me, and you wrote a post about this, that when you're in a mansion, you live like you're in a mansion. But when you're in the woods
ROB: You live like you're in the woods.
PAM: That's your life, and you adapted to the woods, right? Yeah.
ROB: You adapt to the woods. If I was living in a mansion, I probably would eat on fine china. I probably would use forks and spoons and have a napkin on my lap when I'm eating. In the woods, you eat with your hands. In prison, you eat with your hands most of the time. They've got spoons and stuff, but there's a lot of finger food and the whole mentality is different. It is like a subculture. So yes, I do feel like that.
PAM: The reason why this is important, and this is the part that I would like to have judges realize, is that if you don't think you have a chance for freedom, if you think you may be in for life or what seems or feels like life, you are going to adapt to prison and do what you need to do to feel comfortable. And that sometimes means doing things that on the outside
ROB: Will seem abnormal. And in an abnormal environment, doing abnormal things is normal. And so this is why I always talk about why and how we incarcerate people and why it should change because it's counterproductive to rehabilitation. It's counterproductive because if a person got all his life to be in prison and he has no hope or nothing else, more than likely he's going to just fall into what's going on in prison. I mean, you have exceptions: people who try to use their times wisely and still try to have a cause that's bigger than themselves and fight for certain things. But it's like there's no hope for nothing else. Now if we incentivize them to do better, maybe they would. LIke, I always use the example of my friend that I was telling you about. So my friend was locked up, he had been locked up like 30 years when IRAA came out and at that time he had never even thought about going on to get his GED. But after IRAA came out, he got his GED.
PAM: And IRAA is the second look law.
ROB: IRAA's the second look law that we're talking about. And for five days straight, he would tell me like, "Hey Rob, did I tell you I got my GED?" And I laughed. I said, "Yeah, you told me." "I ain't know I told you." And then the next day, "Hey Rob, did I tell you I got my GED?" But he was just that excited about getting his GED, because, truthfully, within his heart, he didn't think that he had the aptitude to get his GED.
But when incentivized to do so, knowing that he can get his freedom, he went and got his GED. And not only did he get his GED, he started going to college. He started inquiring about different programs and stuff like that. So what this tells me or what this shows is that if we incentivize programming, if we incentivize taking classes, if we incentivize psychology classes and things of that nature, even if a person is not really into it, they may gain confidence or they may learn something that they can use in the world and this will help them. You always talk about how they incarcerate in Europe and you use that analogy. Maybe you want to say something about that and what that looks like, because you've been in there.
PAM: Well, I mean, yeah, the difference is for instance in Norway they try to make prison as much like life on the outside as possible because you want people to feel like they're on their way back to the outside. And in fact, I have a friend who doesn't have really any prospect of freedom. And when...you know, you can say that selling drugs is a bad thing, but in his mind he doesn't have a job, he doesn't want to starve because the food...
ROB: There ain't no jobs, for real, that's going to pay you what you need to live in prison.
PAM: And he doesn't have family members to send money in. People don't realize this. We've talked about this in other episodes, but what they feed you isn't really enough. You have to have money to buy...
ROB: You got to have money to buy commissary, stuff like that.
PAM: So he says, don't judge me for selling drugs. This is my life. I will do what I have to do to be at least a little bit comfortable. Don't be so holier than thou, basically is what he was telling me. So what difference does it make? That law was passed and you suddenly had, a whole bunch of you, suddenly had hope you could get out.
ROB: The thing is though, it was like, at first I had hope but it wasn't tangible. And so I still was doing all the things that I had been doing because...In prison you have what we call bidding, which is how you do your time. Some people do their time gambling and watching sports. Some do their time playing basketball, some people do their time going to the law library trying to get out of jail. There's all different type of ways. It's just a routine that you do every day for years and years at a time. That's how you do your time. That's what makes you peaceful or allows you to do the time. Through bidding, you allow yourself to be there. So, it is good and bad too. The good allows you to do the time. The bad also allows you to do the time.
Because now you're getting indoctrinated, you're not really thinking about your freedom at the same rate probably. And you get used to being in prison. So that's kind of like what I was wrestling with, with the IRAA bill. Because I still was into stuff that was going on in prison and that's why I was denied at my first IRAA hearing.
Because I caught a shot around the same time that I asked for a lawyer for my IRAA hearing. It goes back to what you were talking about, about what people sell drugs and stuff like that. For me it was like, okay, I got a son out there that my mother adopted at 8 years old and she's raising him and my mother didn't put me in prison. So I got to find some type of way within [prison] because I always felt as though I have the opportunity to do anything I want to do. Once I get into the world, I'm intelligent and I know I'm going to be all right, but while I'm here I need some money, so when I go to the streets, I don't have no type of problems with starting a business or doing real estate or stocks or all the things that I studied while I was in jail.
But when this IRAA stuff started happening, I started seeing or I learned through doing different classes and programs that yeah, I believe that to be true. But by doing those type of things, you also create bad habits. You might go into the world and try to take those shortcuts. So I started checking that on the back end. But at first, I wasn't involved in those type of things and that's where my mind was at because IRAA wasn't really tangible. But then I got to the jail and really seeing my friends going out the door. And that's what I should have told my judge in my first hearing. But I lied because I didn't feel as though he would really understand my story. I should have shared my story with him.
PAM: What's important here is the power of hope. The power of knowing that if you change it will make a difference. Imagine somebody, though, who has either life without parole or a sentence of...I know somebody in our network who has a sentence of 99 years. And here's the sad thing: The second look laws usually are only for people who went in when they were very young. In DC it's up to the age 25. And know several who were 25; they just missed it. And I'll say this, it was very disappointing. DC had proposed a change that would say, no matter how old you were when you went in, if you have been in prison for at least 20 years, you can petition for release based and rehabilitation. I really do believe that no matter what age you were, if you're in for that long, people change, all people change. But unfortunately, because DC's not a state, Congress ended up vetoing it and that never went into effect. And I have to tell you, I had talked to people who really had hope there for a while and now they don't have it anymore.
ROB: Yeah, I got a lot of friends that felt that hope. And now they don't have it, but some of 'em are still holding out hope that we might get a second chance to pass this type of bill.
They asked me to fight for these type of bills and to, when I get in these rooms, to speak about stuff like this and that we're changing and what that really looks like. Everybody changes. It is scientifically proven that people age out of crime. And then also statistics support the fact that people that did long sentences usually don't come back to jail. Look at the Ungers. The Ungers is a case where a group of men in Maryland who were locked up as juveniles and they did over 30 years. I think it was like 50 or a hundred of them were let out [it was 200] and only, like, three of them recidivated. And now it's seven years later. It's the same thing with IRAA. There's over 150 people that have been released and it's probably like, I can count on my hand how many have caught another trial. And there's only one I know of who committed a violent crime. But what happens is, a hundred people get released on a bill like this and they go on to do wonderful things. They write books, they're authors, they're entrepreneurs working with youth, they're doing community work, they're doing civic engagement work or they're just living their life and taking care of their family. And then one person does something and people don't talk about the 99 people, they talk about the one.
And that's the problem with these type of rules and why they use them to fear monger why they shouldn't let violent offenders out.
PAM: There's always exceptions.
ROB: Yet all these violent offenders have done wonderful things in the community,
PAM: The thing these second look laws is the power of hope. Even though I didn't really get involved until around the time it was passed, or right afterwards, I talked to people in our network who, when they become eligible for IRAA, you see a change in their attitude. They're all of a sudden thinking about staying out of trouble, not getting in trouble and getting into programs. This is the power of hope.
And that goes back to what we were just talking about. We really need to change prison and incentivize.
PAM: Now the problem is, the way IRAA is structured, if you're denied,,, and there were some people who were denied and there's actually an increasing number who are denied the first time...you're allowed to reapply three years later. We talked in a previous episode about the problem with the power of hope. If it's dangled in front of you and then it's taken away... it is incredibly devastating to say to somebody, "You have an opportunity, you have a chance," and then it's yanked away. So, one of your best friends in prison, his name is Angelo Daniels, he's known by the nickname Nut, just went through the same thing you did. He was denied the first time and you're going to hear an interview with him. He talks both about the hope offered by this law -- even though he was denied, he has a chance in three years to reapply -- but also what it felt like to be denied. So let's listen to him.
ANGELO DANIELS: Hope is very important. Hope is what keep you striving. Hope is what keeps you going. With the IRAA, I knew that if I stayed focused and continued to strive like I was striving...Because you know how the parole board is, the parole board is real shaky. You know what I'm saying? The parole board is so shaky that you don't know what you're going to get. But I know that with IRAA, if I continue to program and continue to stay focused, I have the opportunity to make it home. You got to realize I done had a lot of setbacks in my life. So with each setback I know that I got to remain strong and continue to have my resolve. That's what have made me continue, after 30 years of incarceration, that's what made me continue to stay strong and remain firm. It's coping with setbacks, mishaps and things of that nature. So, I continue to have faith and my faith makes me remain strong.
PAM: So, you just listened to Nut and you went through this, you know what it felt like. It must also feel really hard. He's going through this and now you're home and you're not with him anymore.
ROB: He's like one of my best friends. He is a comrade of mine and I do know what he's going through. But he wears his different than, well we all wear it a little bit the same. And it's in the sense that I just get up and I put one foot in front of other. Yeah, I'm crushed. Yeah, I'm mad. But when it's my time, it's my time and my time is going to come. And that's kind of how he took it and that's how I took it outside of me being crushed and having to rebuild. And for me the hardest part was telling my mother and dealing with my mother through these types of things because that's my baby. And as hard as I did 30 years, she did it harder than me because she did each day with me. That was the person that I called for everything, up until I was sufficient enough and met you and stuff like that when I didn't have to put that type of burden on her. And for Nut, he got a 30-year-old daughter, a son that's like 25 and both of 'em are in the world and his daughter loves him... both of them love him to death, but our girls are all about their father. And they had this man wait seven months to tell him no.
PAM: I have to tell you, I was at his hearing and I thought...
ROB: I know.. he was supposed to have made it. He ain't had a shot in 10, 15, well about 12, 13 years now and he did every program you could think about in prison. There was no reason for them to deny him. What was the denial for? It was just crazy.
PAM: It was a shock. It was a shock...
ROB: to everybody. It was a shock to everybody except the judge.
PAM: Yeah, I mean, if you went to his hearing...I literally came away thinking he's going to be released. But what's amazing about him, despite that severe disappointment, he wrote this post he wanted me to send out to the entire network where he said, "No, this is my responsibility. Don't be thinking...
ROB: I take responsibility. I did the actions. The main reason why the judge denied him is because he had some assaults from 13 years ago or something like that. That was one of the main ones. But he had a string of assaults in his early time in jail. They denied him because of that. And basically what Nut was saying was that he wanted to put a message out to the rest of the world, but also to young guys that may follow in our footsteps or are thinking about it. When you make your bed you got to lie in it and I got to take responsibility for the things that I do in life. And so if this is the consequences, I did the act and I'm going to take the consequences. I'm going to learn from them and I'm going to get stronger from it. And that's kind of how he took it. He's just a resilient guy.
PAM: It was funny because I had a discussion with him after reading the post. I'm like, "Wait a minute, you were so young at the time." I was the one saying to him...But he felt strongly about making sure everybody knew, do not spend your time crying in your milk."
ROB: Outside of do not spend your time crying, and this is for the young guys who may follow our podcasts and stuff like that: Don't do nothing that you ain't willing to stand on, period. So if you know ain't trying to do 30 years, don't do the crime. You got to think about those type of things before you make decisions. And that's one of the main things that I learned, even later, since we met in 2020: It's making that cost-benefit analysis with every decision. Is this worth it? Do I do this? If I do this, what's going to happen? But when you are young, you don't really do that.
PAM: That's a part of the reason for the IRAA bill.
ROB: Because young people don't do that. They can't do that almost. But you wrote a post after your denial...You were a little bit like Nut I think. And what I admired about you at the time, even though I was devastated, it didn't take you long to bounce back and you wrote a post where you looked at it and you said, "What can I learn from this?" And if you remember the post you wrote, you said, "I'm transitioning from being a product of to a creator of." Sure you can say, "Yes, but I was young. Yes, but I lived in this kind of neighborhood" and blame it on the fact that you're a product of your environment. Instead you said "No, I'm going to create what my reality is." And that was I think a very important post that you wrote.
I come from a community where.... I've always been intelligent. I always got As and Bs in school and I was just telling somebody about this yesterday and it's like because those type of things wasn't celebrated in my community. I oftentimes dumbed myself down -- not to the extent I wouldn't get good grades, but I dumbed myself down in the sense that I would hang with people who were doing bad things. and I leaned more to crime and stuff like that because that's what was celebrated in my community. And it is like, you don't see positive role models in your environment. So I lean towards that. That's the product of part. But as you grow older and you mature and you really look back on your life, there's a lot of people that come from my community, and not all of the come to prison.
It all comes down to choices. I'm a grown man now. I can't keep on going back to what happened and all that. So I decided that yeah, I'm going to create my own new reality. We going to create More than Our Crimes and I'm going to make this as big as possible and I'm going to have an effect on the world. And not only that, I'm going to show what rehabilitation really looks like and that's what I aim to do. I aim to show what rehabilitation looks like and who we are to those people who classified us as super predators or unfit to ever enter society again...all those type of bad classifications that they had on us and dangers they assigned to us...who we really are and who we can be today and what we are doing and the work that we're doing.
PAM: Now, there was another method of getting out of prison. Some states still have parole. But DC people go into the federal system, and the federal system abolished parole, and that happened in the year 2000. And I still think this is sort of odd to be honest with you. I think when the laws change, it should apply to everybody. But they don't do it that way. So anybody convicted before...It makes no sense to me, but anybody who was convicted before the year 2000 still has parole. That means going to the US Parole Commission. It is supposed to be an opportunity. So, you had a sentence of 30 years to life. So the way it was going to work is, when it got to 30 years ....
ROB: You started seeing the parole board after 30 years and then after that, whatever hit they give you. So, the first time I went to parole board I was a 9 and I was given a two-year hit or a two-year set-off, which means that I see 'em again in two years.
PAM: But they can do that for life. And they do. I'm going to shift here and say this is something that you can take all the responsibility that you want, but...There's a person I interviewed, and that you're going to hear from him in minute, named Anthony McCoy and he is to me an example of how broken the parole system is. I know a lot of people advocate for return of parole, but it's really important how you do it because what keeps happening with the federal parole commission is that they have an algorithm that indicates if you should be released or not and they ignore it.
ROB: Exactly. So, they got a point system. It is called a salient factor in your score. If you're a zero, and zero is good, you're supposed to get parole. One is you're supposed to give parole with the highest level of supervision. Two is iffy and three you're supposed to be denied. For instance, in my situation, the first time I was a one. I hadn't had a shot in like five years and he denied me and told me that he wanted to see....I got all my good time while I was in the DC jail and he wanted to see me do it in a penitentiary setting. Which was crazy to me because it's like if you're saying you want me to do something in the penitentiary setting, then you also know that the penitentiary setting is worse than the setting that I just come from and that it's harder to do it in a penitentiary setting. It's just crazy. That's why I've been denied four times. The second time I was denied because I had a shot, which was warranted, and the last two times I was a zero. I was supposed to got parole and the examiner told me that he was recommending that I get parole. But the commission denied me afterwards.
PAM: So Anthony McCoy, you're going to hear, what drives me wild about his case is...he sent me the decision sheet he got...and it's clear it's because of his original crime. You can never change that. Parole is not supposed to be a retrial of your crime. No matter what programming you do, there's no way you can change that. It makes a mockery of parole. So you're going to hear Anthony talk about his case.
ANTHONY MCCOY: I went up for parole four times now, since 2017. The first one was a three-year set off. The second one was another three-year set off. The third one, they gave me two years. No, first they granted it to me, they granted it to me. Then two weeks later, they come back and said, well their superiors didn't like the recommendation. So they took the grant back and gave me two years. So that was the third time. And then I did the two years and that was the worst one I had because we didn't even discuss anything about me. They just talked to the [victim's] family, spoke to me, and then they just gave me another two years. The only thing they told me, Ms. Bailey, is continue to program. I have been programming, I have great, clear conduct. I have done everything that was asked of me by the parole board and even more. And this time, I questioned them at the end. "What is it that I need to do to make parole?" And the guy said, "That's a good question. You have done everything that you're supposed to do." It's just my past history and the nature of the crime. And that's it. 26 years and four months off of a 16-year -- 15-year-eight-months -- to life sentence.
PAM: His case is a little bit like yours, but he is not eligible for IRAA. He was 25, I can't remember his exact age, but he was a little bit older. So he's not eligible. Parole is his only chance or maybe compassionate release down the line. And if this is what the commission's going to do...I mean he can't change his crime. I want to ask you, you had denials too. You had four. How did you stay positive in the face of all that?
ROB: After a while it is just redundant and it is just a part of it. Just like, you're beaten down so far or beaten down so low about it that it don't even have the same punch no more. And I also know that, alright, it is a year, I got a year and I'm going back to see 'em again and I'm going to get it or I got IRAA and I'm about to get that. So that's how I dealt with it. Same way. People ask me how I did 30 years. But I always had a motion in court. I always went to the law library for my case. So although I wasn't on it to the point that I believed wholeheartedly that I was going home on one of these motions, I always had the hope that I could win this motion or I wished that this motion would come through and I would be released. So you might file a motion and you might not get an answer for two, three years. You do that five, six times and you 20 years in. So that's kind of how, outside of just doing time, I got through it.
PAM: Yeah, you and I had conversations several times when you'd be saying "No, this time I feel it. I'm going to get out this time." And I'd be thinking in my head, "I don't know. Last time we thought that too."
ROB: My mother said, she was like, "Rob, I'm just waiting on it. I'll believe it when the decision comes."
PAM: But you always had confidence.
ROB: Because I deserved to be free. I knew I was ready for society. I knew that I had been rehabilitated and I couldn't understand or I couldn't fathom why anybody would deny me.
PAM: But also I think that if you stop believing if you stop having hope... I mean, that's what keeps you going. You have to have hope.
ROB: Yeah, you got to believe in it. Got to believe that it's coming. It's coming.
PAM: So, to me, if there's one point I would like people to take from this episode is the importance of offering people real second chances. And it is important to everybody so that you'll have less violence in prison. There's more rehabilitation chances. But I want to point out that to me...I believe in second chances for everybody. What there's a tendency to do...like with the First Step Act that President Trump passed in his first term and has allowed a lot of people to get out of prison. A big thing about that act was that they exempted anybody who was in for a violent crime. That's actually something you and I wrote in the first blog post...that you should offer the hope of getting out for everybody. Everybody can change no matter what your charge is. What would you want to say to... if you had the opportunity to sit with a policymaker and say why they should not be exempting people in for violent crimes, what would you say?
ROB: Look at me. Look at Halim Flowers. Look at Anthony Petty. All these are guys who are out here in the world doing amazing things. They're sitting in these rooms with the policymakers, they're sharing their stories, they're dealing with the youth who may be following in their footsteps. They're doing entrepreneurial work, they're traveling the country, they 'rebeing citizens. This is an example of why you should give second chance to guys like myself. We all are walking examples of that.
PAM: And that's why we're called what we are. You're more than your worst mistakes.
ROB: You're more than your crimes.
PAM: Yeah. Yeah.
ROB: That's where the name came from.
PAM: Yeah. So thank you everybody for listening to this episode. I hope you'll share it with other people and talk about it over dinner and subscribe. Thank you.
