In addition to her reality show, her makeup brand, KKW Beauty, and her body-shaping clothing line SKIMS, Kardashian West has been busy advocating for prison reform and helping change the correctional system in the States. -United.
So far, the reality TV star has been responsible for the release of several inmates who have been wrongly sentenced to prison and intends to continue working with the White House on prison reform regardless the next president.
Kim Kardashian West started working on prison reform in 2017
Kardashian West’s work with prison reform began in the fall of 2017. While browsing Twitter one night, she came across the story of Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother serving a life sentence for non-violent drug charges.
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After watching the video on Johnson’s case, Kardashian West immediately shared the story with her millions of Twitter followers, but felt she still had more to do.
Speaking with Time in April 2020, the reality TV star revealed Johnson’s story was a “huge eye-opener.”
“That someone who was a phone mule [received] a sentence harsher than Charles Manson made absolutely no sense to me, ”she said. “It really broke my heart, and I just wanted to help him. Because [I knew] I could. ”
Learning about Johnson’s case was somewhat of a highlight for Kardashian West, and soon she began working on prison reform with lawyers and advocacy groups.
After realizing Johnson could be released thanks to a presidential pardon, Kardashian West used her connections to contact the White House. She eventually made contact with Ivanka Trump to discuss the situation.
“I called Ivanka and we had a really good conversation about women and the desire to help each other,” the mother of four said in a 2018 interview with Today. “I knew she would have understood Alice. She was immediately so receptive and so brilliant.
Trump then put Kardashian West in touch with her husband, Jared Kushner, who immediately took an interest in the case and together they brought her to the president.
Kim Kardashian West is now studying to become a lawyer
In 2018, Kardashian West met with President Donald Trump to discuss Johnson’s case. After persuading him to support the First Step Act, which helps non-violent offenders gain leniency, President Trump granted Johnson leniency.
Since she managed to help Johnson get out of prison, Kardashian West quickly realized that she would like to do more than just draw attention to people’s stories.
In April 2019, she revealed to Vogue that she was studying to become a lawyer at a licensed law firm in San Franciso instead of attending law school.
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Under the supervision of her two lawyer mentors, Jessica Jackson and Erin Haney, Kardashian West is studying eighteen hours per week towards the bar exam in 2022.
Reality TV star will continue to advocate for prison reform ‘whoever is president’
Since announcing her intention to become a lawyer, Kardashian West has taken her apprenticeship very seriously and intends to continue working on her law school as well as her prison reform efforts no matter what.
Although she currently has a lot to do as a mother, wife, acclaimed reality TV star and savvy businesswoman, the KUWTK star plans to continue working with the White House to free even more people from prison, regardless of which president takes over as president in the next election.
“She says that no matter who is president, she plans to work closely with them in Washington to fight criminal justice and prison reform,” an insider recently told HollywoodLife. “She doesn’t care who she works with, she really wants to help people and do the right thing and she feels she can work with anyone. She knows she has the power to do it.
