My name is Ashley Smith—13 and a half years, July of 2026. Well, I’ve done every group that’s been available to me, but because I’m LD, not a lot’s been available until the very end of my sentence. But right now I’m in Jackson College full time for a double associate’s degree. And I have 36 credits done. I’m on a Pell Grant. Well, I think it’s a good thing, because I don’t think that like one act that somebody does defines their whole character and everything about them. So I think it’s really important to give people a second chance, because it shows that, you know, people can be forgiven, and they can do something better with their life. I’m from the west side of the state, like Kalamazoo, Van Buren County. I mean, really, I would think that the best thing that I could do is just show how be an example to the community that rehabilitation is possible, and that a second chance can be a success. People don’t need to fear felons, and criminals, people that have been to prison, because we are people just like anybody else. I would just try to get them to empathize with us, and ask them to think of their worst experience that’s ever happened to them and ask if they would like for that to be the one thing that people thought of and judged them on for the rest of their life. Because that’s what we experience every day. And that’s what they, when they say that they don’t want to give us a second chance, that’s what they’re doing. And we’re so much more than that one thing. Everybody is, people are, multifaceted. We’re not just that little tiny box on our oldest sheet that they break us down to. And I think that once people think of things like that, they realize that people are more than that. And people do deserve another chance. People just don’t ever think of people in prison until it happens to somebody that they know or love. The law is entirely reactive instead of proactive and I think that we really need to as a society, start thinking of proactive things, so that the overcrowding and the prison system and just the general justice system is not in such a bad state as it is and giving people a second chance is a step in that direction. And it’s very important that we start looking at things like this.