The National Council Statement on Clemency for Michelle West

BOSTON, Jan. 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, The National Council, rejoices that Michelle West has been granted clemency. We've been fighting for Michelle's freedom, the freedom of other long-timer women, and an end to a draconian criminal law system still filling old prisons and investing billions in building new prisons, for more than 10 years.

"As happy as we are for Michelle, our work continues," said Executive Director Andrea James. "It should not take 10+ years of advocacy to bring a single woman home." Michelle leaves behind hundreds of women who also deserve clemency who have been passed over. "Clemency should not be a lottery held once every four years but recognized for what it is: a mechanism for correcting the unjust results which our criminal legal system manufactures much too often," said Senior Counsel Catherine Sevcenko.

Today we call for clemency for Roberta Bell, doing a life sentence for a crime for which she was acquitted in state court, Glenn Metz, who has spent the last 30 years in prison mentoring young men, raising money for charity, and who the Bureau of Prisons itself has said should go home. There are thousands more women and men buried in federal and state prisons whose sentences should be commuted. Prisons do not create healthy, thriving communities. Healthy, thriving people do. If we truly want safe, healthy neighborhoods, it's time to stop the reliance on a failed criminal law system, acknowledge the further harm reliance on prisons causes, and organize for change for new systems focused on justice as healing.

Thank you to our immense national and international Sisterhood that stood with us at every gathering, event, standout, march and rally to lift Michelle West and hundreds of others. At The National Council we are deeply grateful. Our work continues. Onward.

About The National Council: 

The National Council is a 501c3 organization founded in 2010 by a group of women incarcerated in the federal prison in Danbury, CT. The organization works to end the criminal legal system's forced separation of women and girls from their communities and loved ones through hyper-local organizing, public awareness education, movement lawyering, and the national FreeHer Campaign. Our mission is to end the incarceration of women and girls.

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SOURCE The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls