Hope After Hardship: Redefining Your Future
Criminal justice and foster care reform advocate JARRETT HARPER shares lessons in resilience, accountability, and rebuilding one’s life despite seemingly insurmountable odds. Harper shares his personal story of overcoming adversity, finding purpose after incarceration, and becoming a voice for those seeking second chances.
Breaking the Cycle: Addressing Rehabilitation Through Reform and Compassion
Criminal justice and foster care reform advocate JARRETT HARPER dives into the root causes of mass incarceration and highlights policies and programs empowering rehabilitation over punishment.
Response & Repair: Higher Education, Corrections, and Solidarity
In this thought-provoking keynote, JARRETT HARPER explores the transformative power of education within the correctional system and its vital role in fostering personal growth, reducing recidivism, and rebranding trust within communities. Drawing on his lived experience and advocacy work, he examines:
Harper challenges audiences to rethink their assumptions about justice, education, and community responsibility, inspiring actionable solidarity between institutions, incarcerated individuals, and the broader public.
Humanitarian Jarrett Harper partners with Human Rights Watch to address the reintegration of people sentenced to life without parole
Criminal justice and foster care reform advocate JARRETT HARPER has lent his voice and story to the Human Rights Watch as part of a report advocating for supported reintegration of people sentenced to life without parole. Harper served as the face of a report assessing the post-release experiences of individuals sentenced to life without parole as well as legislative opportunities for the California legislature. Harper told Human Rights Watch, “I wanted my legacy to be more than an irredeemable foster youth. I came home, and I became a mentor. I became an advocate.”
Watch Jarrett Harper in conversation with the Washington Post Live >>
Jarrett Harper is the Founder and Executive Director of Better Days. He advocates for foster care reform & criminal justice reform while working to stop life sentences for children, develop better rehabilitation resources for those returning to society, and end the foster care-to-prison pipeline.
A Los Angeles County foster care system survivor, Jarrett endured 20 years of mass incarceration. After experiencing unimaginable trauma and abuse, at 16, Jarrett took the life of his abuser to protect himself and his younger brother. A year later, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole plus ten years. Despite having no chance of release from prison, he found forgiveness and hope and transformed his own life by helping change the lives of other men in prison who had the opportunity to get out.
After 20 years of creating and facilitating self-improvement programs for his peers, Jarrett’s sentence was commuted by Governor Jerry Brown through the tireless work of a group of dedicated advocates, including Bryan Stevenson, John Legend, Ty Stiklorius, Elizabeth Calvin from Human Rights Watch, Scott Budnick and Loyola Law School. On June 18, 2019, he was released from prison by Governor Gavin Newsom. Shortly after his release, Jarrett became an ambassador for Represent Justice’s Just Mercy campaign and has quickly become a sought-after speaker, booking engagements for Google, YouTube, Verizon, USC, Princeton, The Washington Post, National Urban League, Beit T’ Shuvah, The Boston Celtics and more.
My Speaker List
