Facing Life Without Parole Inside a California Prison - YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism

May 3, 2024

California imprisons nearly in various types of detention centers, including prisons and jails. If California was a country, it would have one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. Thousands of these incarcerated people are serving sentences of 鈥渓ife in prison without the possibility of parole鈥� (LWOP), meaning they will live and die behind bars.聽

According to , 鈥溌槎股缡录� than 5,000 of the nearly 56,000 men and women sentenced to LWOP in the United States are in California, the third largest number of any U.S. jurisdiction.鈥� Now, states such as are considering overturning LWOP as unconstitutional.聽

For the last 20 years, YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar has been communicating via letters with Dortell Williams, who has been imprisoned in California under an LWOP sentence. Williams has filed commentaries for , written books, and earned multiple during a life that has been mostly spent behind bars. For the first time in their decades-long correspondence, thanks to newly enacted in prison communication, Williams was able to speak face-to-face with Kolhatkar via video chat from Chuckawalla Valley State Prison, and appeared as a guest on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali. He shared what it has been like for him to be incarcerated for decades with no prospects of freedom.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of聽YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent 麻豆社事件 Institute鈥檚 Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of聽Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice聽(2023) and聽Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence聽(2005). Her forthcoming book is called聽Talking About Abolition聽(Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women鈥檚 Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master鈥檚 in Astronomy from the University of Hawai鈥檌, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on 鈥淢y Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host鈥� in her 2014聽聽of the same name.