# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
jay-z and meek mill launch prison reform organization  - cnn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jay-Z and Meek Mill launch prison reform organization

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The rappers have joined with sports and business leaders to try and reform the criminal justice system.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Many convicts spend their lives going in and out of jail, never getting on the right track. But there are some who do make it out of the slammer and completely turn their lives around for the better. These people deserve some recognition for proving that criminals can be rehabilitated. Here's a look at 10 famous ex-cons who turned it around and have successfully avoided getting drawn back into the bad habits that got them thrown into the clink in the first place:

Charles Colson worked as the former Special Counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973, and was best known for being part of the Watergate Seven. Colson pleaded guilty to Watergate-related charges and to obstruction of justice. He was sentenced for one to two years in prison, but only served seven months at the federal Maxwell Prison in Alabama. Colson made a change for the good while in prison. He converted to Christianity and became deeply impacted by the people he met there. Following his release, Colson started Prison Fellowship, a national ministry that helps prisoners develop or restore a relationship with Christ. Colson's touching program has helped prisoners live a better life and strengthen their spirit.

Martha Stewart is best known as a business mogul and domestic diva, but her image certainly changed when she was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and two counts of making false statements. Essentially, Stewart lied to investigators about a stock sale and was later sentenced to five months in federal prison. After her release from Alderson Federal Prison Camp, Stewart launched her comeback. She returned to television with The Martha Stewart Show, released a couple books and took on several new projects that helped rebrand her name and reputation.

From 1996 to 2001, Robert Downey Jr. was one of Hollywood's biggest bad boys. The actor was arrested several times during these years for drug-related charges involving possession of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Downey has battled substance abuse for the majority of his life and was unsuccessful in his drug treatment programs. He was constantly on probation and spent a year in California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran, California. Downey eventually battled his addictions and made a highly successful comeback, starring in several blockbuster hits.

When Michael Vick was arrested for running an illegal interstate dog fighting ring and sentenced to three years in prison, football fans didn't know if he'd ever return to the game. Vick pleaded guilty to federal felony charges and served 18 months in prison. After his release, Vick signed with the Philadelphia Eagles and made a successful comeback. During his return season, Vick threw his longest touchdown pass of his career and helped his team win the NFC East title after stepping up as the starter quarterback. As part of his probationary obligations, Vick continues to speak to local youth about his mistakes and how to avoid a troubled life.

In the beginning of Tim Allen's comedic career, he was arrested at the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport in Michigan for possession of cocaine. Allen had just under 1.5 pounds of cocaine on him and was charged with drug trafficking. Because Allen disclosed the names of the other drug dealers, his original life sentencing was shortened to three to seven years. Allen was paroled after serving two years and four months at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sandstone, Minnesota. The ex-convict quickly turned his life around after prison and became one of America's favorite comedic actors.

Nicole Richie was most widely known for being a troubled teen with a reckless lifestyle until she finally turned her life around. In 2003, Richie was arrested and charged with possession of heroin and driving with a suspended driver's license. Three years later, she was arrested again for a DUI after failing a sobriety test and reportedly driving the opposite way on the freeway. She was sentenced to four days in jail, but only served 82 minutes at the Century Regional Detention Center in Lynwood, California. After her short stint in jail, Richie enrolled in an 18-month anti-drinking driver education program in order to get sober. Richie gave up her bad girl ways to focus on her career as a fashion designer, author and mother of two.

Christian Slater's acting career took a beating when he was arrested three times from 1989 to 1997. His first run-in with the law was in 1989, when he was arrested for drunk driving and assault. In 1994, Slater was arrested for trying to board a plane with a gun in his luggage. His last conviction was for assaulting his then-girlfriend and a police officer who was trying to defend her. He was also under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Slater attended a rehabilitation facility for 100 days and then served 59 days in jail. After his release from jail, Slater made a successful comeback in television and film and turned his life around for the better.

Rap superstar 50 Cent, also known by his real name Curtis Jackson III, was arrested on drug-related charges and sentenced to three to nine years in prison in 1994. Back then, Jackson was still an aspiring rapper, who was determined to make something of himself after his release. 50 Cent did his time in an abbreviated six-month boot camp and earned his GED. After his release from behind bars, 50 Cent began rapping and his popularity surged with the release of his first album in 2000.

Danny Trejo earned his label as Hollywood's most notable Mexican bad guy from his own experiences in the slammer. The heavily tattooed tough guy spent years in Los Angeles prisons for drug-related and robbery charges. There, Trejo got his life together and finally got clean. Since his release from prison, Trejo has gone on to star in several action films and television series.

Marion Jones was a world famous Olympian who won five medals in track and field at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, but was later stripped of her medals when she admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs for the competition. She was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for her use of steroids and her involvement in a check fraud scheme. She was sentenced to six months in prison and turned it around after her release. In 2010, Jones made a sports comeback as a point guard for the WNBA Tulsa Shock.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Famous Ex-Cons Who Turned It Around | CriminalJustice.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Those who do make it out of the slammer and turn their lives around for the better deserve some recognition.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Rapper China Mac co-organised a rally in New York calling for justice for Asian Americans [Al Jazeera]

In the quiet suburb of Bensonhurst, New York at the beginning of August, the atmosphere was tense. About 100 protesters had gathered outside the local police station and they were angry.

"We're not here to march on white people, Italian people, Black people, Spanish people. We are here to stand together and march against racism!" yelled protester and popular rapper, China Mac.

In this predominantly white neighbourhood, a Chinese grandmother was slapped and set on fire on July 14. The two attackers allegedly sprayed her with kerosene and lit her shirt on fire without saying a word.

News of the incident went viral, sending shockwaves through the Asian-American community. The rally was organised in response to the attack but also to protest wider prejudice against Asian Americans.

"They [the attackers] put kerosene in their pockets and they walked the street, masked up, ready to attack somebody. They planned on setting somebody on fire. If that's not a hate crime, I don't know what a hate crime is," China Mac said at the rally.

Many believe the attack was motivated by racism but the police are not investigating it as a hate crime.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has since charged two 13-year-old boys for the assault, but the department declined to respond to Al Jazeera's request for an interview.

A different fight

China Mac, whose real name is Raymond Yu, co-organised the rally in Bensonhurst. It was not the first time the 38-year-old locked horns with the law. He has made a career out of it and has been in and out of juvenile homes since he was eight years old.

As a teenager in the 1990s, he was a member of the infamous Ghost Shadow gang, extorting businesses in Manhattan's Chinatown district and fighting deadly turf wars with rival gang, the Flying Dragons.

"Chinatown was a different world back then," he explained. "You could walk down the street and see a dead body. I've seen that."

He spent most of his adult life - 11 years - in New York's notorious Rikers Island prison after shooting and seriously wounding a man.

"I would fight everybody, anybody. It didn't matter if they were the smallest guy or the biggest guy. It didn't matter if there was one or 10. I would fight," he said, speaking to Al Jazeera at a rented Peer Space in Brooklyn.

He still fights, but these days it is with his words.

"Once I was in prison I realised that 'hey that's the thing that's getting you in all this trouble'," he said, referring to his propensity for violence. "This is the thing that's going to have you spend the rest of your life in prison if you don't address it."

Since his release from prison three years ago, China Mac has made waves in New York's hip hop scene as a talented rapper (he describes his music as "gangsta stuff"), attracting hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

Earlier this year, he tapped into this loyal fanbase to whip up support for the thousands of protesters who marched across the US in the Black Lives Matter movement, demanding an end to systemic racism against African Americans.

"This time it's a different fight. It's a fight I feel is worthy, because so many times I fought for nothing. And this time, it's a fight for people," he said.

'That could be my grandmother'

While Americans have been protesting in support of Black lives, racist attacks on another community have been on the rise.

Since March, advocacy groups have recorded more than 2,600 incidents of harassment and hate crimes against Asian Americans linked to the spread of the coronavirus. With the virus originating in China, people of Asian heritage have become targets for xenophobic abuse.

In Texas, a Myanmar father and his toddler were stabbed at a store, allegedly because their attacker thought they were Chinese. A Vietnamese bus driver in California was beaten with a baseball bat by a passenger. In New York, a Korean woman was punched in the face by a stranger as she walked to work.

Then in July, the 89-year-old Chinese grandmother was attacked in Bensonhurst in broad daylight. For China Mac, that was the final straw.

"I was upset. I was angry. I was infuriated," he told Al Jazeera. "It really hit hard, hit home because it could be my mother. That could be my grandmother."

Once again, he mobilised his fans to rally in the neighbourhood, this time for Asian lives.

"I'm just tired of us being looked at as weak. Just allowing people to step on us and over us and attack us and abuse us, and we don't do nothing about it."

"We're not going to be respected if we're just going to be quiet and take it," he said.

'A target on us'

It is a lesson China Mac learned the hard way when he was first sent to a juvenile home as a child.

"They would pick on me because I was the only Asian person there," he recalled.

What started as pranks by the other children quickly escalated to racist abuse. Finally, one morning China Mac put on his shoes to find them drenched in someone's urine.

"I went to the staff and I was crying. The staff looked at me and told me something that really changed my life. He said 'I can't help you'. He said that 'the only thing that will ever help you is if you start fighting for yourself'."

"I earned my respect and I demanded my respect. The only way these attacks, this racism, would stop is if I fought back."

Even after surviving years of gang warfare on the streets of Chinatown, China Mac says his greatest struggle is the current fight against racism in the US. Like many in the Asian-American community, he believes President Donald Trump's repeated use of terms such as "China virus" and "kung flu" to describe COVID-19 have heightened harassment and hate crimes against his community.

"He basically put a target on all Asian Americans; people that live in this country, that were born and raised in this country - he put targets on us," he said.

"It hurts to know that the same country that you're born and raised, hates you or doesn't see you as equal.

"This is my country. I'm just fighting because it's the right thing to do."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ex-prisoner-turned-rapper fights for justice for Asian Americans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the quiet suburb of Bensonhurst, New York at the beginning of August, the atmosphere was tense. About 100 protesters had gathered outside the local police station and they were angry. "We're not here to march on white people, Italian people, Black people, Spanish people. We are here to stand together and march against racism!"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Recently, there has been another push for prison reform by those in the rap community. Def Jam cofounder Russell Simmons has partnered with Jones on Cut50, a bipartisan effort to cut the prison population in half over the next decade. In 2013, longtime Roots affiliate Dice Raw released a mini-doc on mass incarceration called Jimmy's Back, the rap interpretation of Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow. Nas sat down with activist Angela Davis at a 2014 event to discuss the prison-industrial complex and sold black Santa sweaters to raise money for the Center for Court Innovation, a nonprofit seeking to reduce incarceration. Even Waka Flocka Flame, the jokester who once celebrated 4/20 by announcing a fake presidential campaign, went on " The Nightly Show" for a panel debate over Clinton's 1994 crime bill, now overwhelmingly viewed as a mistake.

These are the new rap activists taking up one of the most important causes in America.

Common Lobbies the California State Capitol

Common has always been politically outspoken in his music, but it wasn't until he worked with director Ava DuVernay on her Martin Luther King biopic, Selma, in 2014 that he decided to take up the mantle of policy advocacy. After visiting inmates in a California state prison and arranging a private meeting with Governor Jerry Brown's top aide in March, the rapper met with Democratic lawmakers in May to discuss bills that defend Miranda Rights and parole opportunities for juveniles. He continued this advocacy work on behalf of underage offenders with an August benefit show also featuring J. Cole. Called Imagine Justice, the concert was held in support of overhauling California's bail system and ensuring protections for juveniles in detention facilities.

Pusha T Pushes for Reform and Rehabilitation

Pusha T has been one of the most diligent proponents of prison reform. Last November, he filmed a PSA for California's Proposition 64, a bill legalizing recreational marijuana use, on the basis that the measure could help lower incarceration rates and deal with recidivism, the tendency for prisoners to reoffend. "If California's Prop 64 passes, no one will ever be incarcerated for marijuana again," he said. A month later, Pusha did a PSA for Frictionless' MySentence campaign, which fights legislation that forces offenders to serve predefined terms for crimes. Around the same time as these two powerful PSAs, the GOOD president did a handful of media appearances to discuss justice reform, including a Complex cover in which he donned a prison jumpsuit and an interview with Ava DuVernay about 13th, her must-see documentary on mass incarceration.

Remy Ma Calls for the End of the Private Prison System

Remy Ma knows a thing or two about being incarcerated. In 2008, she was convicted of assault, illegal weapon possession, and attempted coercion. She served six years, and has since become an outspoken critic of the system across the media. "We have to end the private prison system," she told me earlier this year, detailing how the industry is designed to profit off black incarceration and why inconsistencies with mandatory sentencing often leave room for racist motivations. More recently, Remy came to Meek Mill's defense: "They set it up so that you go back," she told the Breakfast Club. "It's like, no matter what you do, you never finish paying your debt to society."

JAY-Z Produces Prison Reform Documentary

JAY-Z has been openly pushing for prison reform for years. During an On the Run tour stop in Pasadena in 2014, he supported California Proposition 47, a measure to reduce the penalty for some non-violent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and to shorten sentences. In 2016, JAY and the New York Times released a short film about the history of unjust drug sentencing laws, calling the War on Drugs an "epic fail." He took these efforts a step further this year by executive-producing a docuseries: Time: The Kalief Browder Story documents one Bronx teen's unlawful incarceration and his eventual suicide, showing how the system railroads black men and women, and breaks many of them. Hov also took aim at America's classist bail system in an op-ed he wrote for Time back in June: "On any given day over 400,000 people, convicted of no crime, are held in jail because they cannot afford to buy their freedom," he wrote. "We can't fix our broken criminal justice system until we take on the exploitative bail industry."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Hip-Hop Is Fighting for Prison Reform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Recently, there has been another push for prison reform by those in the rap community. Def Jam cofounder Russell Simmons has partnered with Jones on Cut50, a bipartisan effort to cut the prison population in half over the next decade.