You were caught, you knew you would be punished, but 25 years in prison with grown men who were violent criminals, what was that initial reaction? Did you fully comprehend what was happening?

[00:03:13] Kirn: To correct-- Sorry, not to correct, but to--

[00:03:18] Host: Sure. Clarify.

[00:03:19] Kirn: To give more clarification, I was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. This was happening at the time when mass incarceration was on the upswing. If you recall, this was also during the time of the superpredator scare that was going on publicly. It was part of the national dialogue. Being a juvenile tried as an adult, this case was an example of kids gone wild, pretty much. We were used as an example locally to show that punishment was going to be meted out harshly to anyone.

Because of recent law changes in that California has been backtracking a little bit on the over-harsh punishment, laws have now changed to where people who were involved in the periphery are no longer being held to the fullest culpability.

I've been in other states and other countries where someone with my level of involvement would not have received a life sentence. California, because we were so far up in the mass incarceration movement ahead of other states and other countries, that culpability was extended to anyone who even were in the fringes of involvement.

[00:04:41] Host: Again, at 16, did you know any of this? Were you aware that this is what the punishment might be?

[00:04:51] Kirn: At 16, if you really think about it, when you're 16, you have an adult-sized body, but your brain isn't fully mature. Science has proven that. When you're 16, you think you're invincible and you think nothing bad can happen to you.

When I'm exposed to this possibility of spending the rest of my life in prison, I didn't really know how to process it. I was still in denial in a lot of ways. I assumed that I would win on appeal and it did not happen. I ended up serving all the way up to beyond my minimum term.

It never really hit me for a long time that I could die in prison. Also, I had this level of determination to where I wasn't going to let this break my spirit. I wanted to make sure that I made the best of my life, if only because of the fact that I didn't have any lived experience of living life as an adult in the outside world. This was all I knew.

I would hear people inside who got incarcerated as adults or later in life and they would talk about, "Oh man, I miss going to the bar and shooting pool with my buddies. College was great because I was able to do this." I had no experience of that, so how can you miss something that you never experienced?

It was a curse and a blessing in some ways because of the fact that I never got to live this life experience, but then also, you can't miss what you never experienced.

[00:06:35] Host: Were there systems in place to protect you in the prison as you were so young or were you just another prisoner?

[00:06:43] Kirn: I was just another prisoner. The laws at the time mandated that juveniles could not be housed with adults, but that law was not followed. There were numerous times where kids ended up incarcerated on the main population.

The state denies it because it's liability on their part. There was a memo in the commissary that says, "You can't sell tobacco to the following inmates because they're under 18." I wish I kept a copy of that, because people were in such denial publicly about, "Oh, the state follows the laws." No, they don't. They follow the law when it's convenient to them.

[00:07:19] Host: You touched on this a little bit, but you're given a 25 years to life sentence, which is-- You'd only lived 16 years at that point, so more than double your life. Then for however long that lasts, what kept you going? You said there was a determination, but how do you find that at 16 years old?

[00:07:45] Kirn: That's interesting. I did have the support of my family. People understood that I wasn't this bad kid, that I was just caught up in a bad situation. People didn't give up on me, and I think I drew on that energy.

I met so many people in prison whose family and their community had just abandoned them altogether. It broke their spirit for a lot of them. They ended up getting involved with drugs to self-medicate, finding some way to act out because they had no other coping mechanism in place.

I guess I was lucky that I was quick to develop coping mechanisms that a lot of people weren't able to develop quickly. At a young age, I figured out a way to survive just living daily life inside the system that some people take 10, 15, 20 years to figure out in order to just give their life some sense of meaning in the process.

[00:08:51] Host: Right. How long would you say did it take for everything to just be routine and that acceptance to settle in?

[00:09:04] Kirn: I would say it happened pretty quickly for me. I was lucky in that I got involved in a church program relatively quickly. Stereotyping me as an Asian person, I was a piano player, as every Asian parent tends to force their kid to take piano or violin. Because of my piano playing skills, it turns out that the church group, they were losing their musician, their keyboard player, to a transfer. I was able to get in very quickly. That normally takes years of a waiting list to get into this part.

Having met the guys there, a lot of them had been already down a number of years. I was able to pick their brain and learn quickly in terms of what works, what doesn't work. I was not a part of a street gang, and therefore the prison gangs did not have their grip on me, like members of street gangs tend to get caught up in once they're inside. Also being an Asian, there are so few Asians in the prison system that the prison expectations, for lack of a better term, weren't there.

[00:10:26] Host: In an idealized world, there should be some level of rehabilitation for prisoners, preparing them for reentry back into society, not leading to recidivism. Did you experience that for yourself, or witness that with other inmates?

[00:10:47] Kirn: At the time that I was incarcerated, there was none. The state was in the process of cutting programs left and right, because of mass incarceration. California went through a prison building boom. From 1980 to 2000, there were 24 prisons built and only one college built in California, and so our prison population exploded.

The state funding that went towards rehabilitation went away to pay for prison building. Because of mass incarceration, because of the superpredator scare, the public was not open to funding programs to help with rehabilitation. We were just locking up more and more people to the point where California, we had built to our capacity. It wasn't until 2014 when California, finally, the voters decided, "This is it. We're not spending any more money on prison building," and reform had to happen.

It was only at that point that we saw reinvestment in programs rather than for prison expansion. It was more for prison reform. It wasn't just the public view of it, it was also the state was mandated by the courts. The prison system had gotten so overcrowded that proper medical care wasn't being made available to the number of prisoners inside. The state was mandated to reduce the prison population.

At one point we were at 200% capacity, and the federal courts had ordered the state to reduce down to 135% capacity. The best way to do that initially was to try to build more prisons or transfer people out. Since there was no funding available for that, the state went to decide, "Okay, then we'll try to reduce the number of people returning to prison." At that point, our recidivism rate was at 60% to 70%. There has been a huge explosion of rehabilitation programs.

Again, this was in 2014. I paroled in 2012, so I had none of those programs available to me. The closest thing I had to rehabilitation program was NA, AA, Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't have a substance abuse problem, but because of the fact that I had to show some type of effort towards self-improvement, I attended the classes. I did get some help out of it, just trying to adapt the AA/NA 12-step principles into my own life, but it was hard for me to think about hitting rock bottom when it comes to substance abuse when I wasn't in that type of situation.

[00:13:36] Host: Right. It's probably the only mental health support that was available as well, I imagine.

[00:13:43] Kirn: Well, there was mental health support available, but that was only because the state had stopped funding the state mental health system. Then the prison system became the largest provider of mental health. People who are incarcerated that should have been receiving help within the Department of Mental Health ended up in the prison system instead.

[00:14:01] Host: Prisons at 200% capacity, it makes prison as a deterrent to crime seem like it's not working.

[00:14:10] Kirn: No, it wasn't working. The solution to fixing the recidivism problem was to spend more money, but yet, as we saw, the prison system exploded. The recidivism just kept growing. It was endless loop of people coming in, not getting the help they needed, and yet coming out, and then reoffending because programs weren't in place to help those who were returning from the system.

[00:14:44] Host: This leads into where I wanted to go now. You spent your teens, your 20s, and most of your 30s incarcerated. You got out at 36 years old. What was your reentry like after leaving freedom as a teen, and returning as a grown adult?

[00:15:02] Kirn: It's interesting. Like the Rip Van Winkle syndrome, you leave at 16 and then you enter this really foreign society. We are in America, but prison system is a society in and of itself. Your experience there can be used to help you with maturation and self-development, but not really. Coming back to the free world, as we call it, I reverted back to a 16-year-old kid.

While I was incarcerated, I had built up a strength of character and leadership skills, but yet, coming back home, I became this timid, spineless kid again. It was very hard for me to reintegrate back into society, because of the fact that, in the Asian community, there's so much shame attached to being formally incarcerated.

Back in 2012, prior to the prison reforms that took place, there were no systems available to help people coming home after a life sentence, because so few at the time were being released. Then as the reforms took place and more people were being released, then support networks started building up. The support networks often didn't include Asians, because the numbers were so small. I was really left to fend for myself, not just as a formerly incarcerated person, but also as a formerly incarcerated Asian person.

I was fortunate that I was born in this country, so I wasn't faced with the deportation threat that a lot of Asian prisoners face upon their release. I was still dealing with the fact that, in a lot of ways, I was the boogeyman in the Korean community. My father was the very first Korean general practice doctor in the north Orange County area. If you grew up in Fullerton, Anaheim, Buena Park in the 1980s, chances are my dad was your doctor. For that reason, a lot of Asian parents, when their kids were screwing up, the Asian parents were telling their kids, "Do you want to end up like that doctor's son who went to prison? You keep acting this way, you're going to end up that way."

Coming home, suddenly I was boogeyman incarnate, boogeyman in the flesh. There was a lot of discomfort around me. Funny story, it's so ingrained about not wanting your kids to associate with the bad influence, that one of my cellmates, when he first transferred into the prison, he was from a neighboring city. He was also charged with murder, but he took a deal for manslaughter. When he told his parents, "Oh, that guy from that Fullerton case is here," his parents told him, "Don't talk to that guy. He's no good." It's like, "Hold on a second. Your son's in the exact same boat as me."

[00:18:03] Host: Wow. It's interesting that you mentioned this level of shame that's present in the Asian communities towards incarceration. A lot of this series is dedicated to the Japanese American incarceration in 1942.

That shame comes up in a lot of these conversations with third generation Japanese Americans who say, "Our parents never talked about this. This wasn't discussed. We didn't share this history, because of that shame." 120,000 innocent people were incarcerated, but still wouldn't talk about it because of the shame of incarceration.

[00:18:51] Kirn: Yes. It's crazy that it took, how many years, 40 years before the topic even became openly discussed and publicly discussed for people that didn't do anything wrong yet. Because this cultural shame is so ingrained, they couldn't bring themselves to discuss it at all. They couldn't talk about their trauma because being mentally weak, having a mental health issue, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, that's also a sign of weakness in the Asian community that doesn't fit the model minority myth, so we don't want to discuss this. What does it matter?

Yet for people who are justice impacted like myself, we made mistakes in our lives. We were incarcerated. How are we supposed to cope with that when our community doesn't allow us to even discuss it when it was an unjust incarceration?

Being able to openly talk to deal with our stresses, deal with our PTSD upon returning home, the stress of reentry, it's been great to be able to find communities now to deal with it. For lack of a better term, the entire world went through a form of incarceration during COVID. In 2021, 2022, as things were opening back up, how many people were talking about, "Oh man, I feel all this anxiety and going back outside again."? It's all like, "Yes," so are you telling me reentry isn't stressful?

At least we as a world had the entire population to fall back on each other. Whenever you had a moment of stress and anxiety being out in public, people understood and were receptive of it. For us, when we came home in the 2012 for me, and the mid-2000 teens for everyone else, it was like people didn't know what we were going through. In the Asian community, people didn't want to hear about it. I had people who were telling me, "No one wants to hear about this, so don't talk about it." Early on when I came home, there was no one else I could talk to because of the fact that I didn't have anyone with the shared experience to have this discussion and cope with.

Just like people who find comfort going to AA/NA meetings. It's those with the shared experience that they can find this camaraderie in healing. Being able to talk about the stressors and being able to recognize a stress point that might cause you to relapse. Having this being able to come out and find more people now because of the reforms that took place, more people who are coming home, especially within the API community, it's been great to find fellowship and camaraderie within this group.

[00:21:46] Host: Talk about how you discovered and got involved with API-RISE. I think this is the perfect transition, and what API-RISE is doing to help with everything that you're talking about.

[00:22:00] Kirn: API-RISE is an acronym for Asian Pacific Islander Reentry and Inclusion through Support and Empowerment. It's an organization and we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary. We had a nice gathering in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles to celebrate it. It really started because of the fact that we needed culturally literate reentry support. Not just reentry support, it's also for families of people who are currently incarcerated. Because of the cultural shame, people don't realize that there are resources available. We have so many family members who come in and give us this long background. That's what they're used to saying because, in their mind, no one who's Asian has their shared experience. We're able to tell them, "No, we've all been there. Let us know what are the specific issues that you need help with."

Then also for people coming home, we have not just community support that we have a monthly member support meeting, but also for people dealing with deportation issues. It's a very specific area of law practice and data that's required for someone to build on their immigration case. Lots of Asians came here as children from refugee camps, and so they don't know anything about the country that they're being deported to.

[00:23:38] Host: Is there a little more concern now with the future, especially connected to the deportation?

[00:23:48] Kirn: Yes, there are, but what a lot of the public doesn't realize is, actually, Barack Obama deported more people than the previous two administrations. There was a lot of cover given because he was the first African American president. The deportation issue, it's much more--

[00:24:09] Host: It's been there.

[00:24:11] Kirn: It's been there. Politicians need a boogeyman to instill fear upon the voting public. Before the Civil Rights Act, it was the scary Black and Brown person. Then it became the drug war, then it became the superpredator, then it became the Muslim terrorist. Then now it was caravans and trans people. It's always a boogeyman to scare the public into buying into whatever the politician wants to pass. If people can recognize the patterns of what's going on, that's fine.

When the trans issue started dying out, they went back to the caravans. Now they're back to the trans issue again. They can't make up their mind because so many people are realizing, "Does this really affect our lives?"

Now we're talking about mass deportations, and obviously everyone's going to be worried about it. Me, I was born in this country, but then talk about taking away birthright citizenship. The fact that my mom was not a citizen when I was born. Even though now I am almost 50 years old, I'm fearful of even traveling outside the country because they might not let me back in.

Saying you were born here, you have a right to, that doesn't mean anything in this day and age. I could fight it and I will win in court, but that might take me decades and tens of thousands of dollars to fight this issue. Obviously, there's a lot of fear.

[00:25:45] Host: Another part of the work that you do is working in justice reform for minors charged as adults. What would you like to see changed? Obviously, that's a broad question and I'm sure there are myriad things that need to change, but what are the tent poles that need to be taken down?

[00:26:10] Kirn: Obviously the biggest issue is just minors being charged as adults, period. California, fortunately we went from having the age at 16, dropping it to 14, then raising it back up to 16 to be tried as an adult.

In other states, there are still no age limit on which a child can be tried as an adult. Obviously, even when a 16 or 17-year-old gets involved in criminal activity, there has to be some correction done. Modern science has shown us that kids, and I'm going to say kids because anyone under 18 goes to children's hospital. We don't have the right to sign our own contract. We don't have the right to drink or vote.

[00:26:58] Host: Vote, yes.

[00:26:59] Kirn: When these kids get arrested, they're being held to the same liability as adults, when brain science has shown that kids don't have the same level of maturation. About 15 years ago there was a proposal in California to allow 16 and 14-year-olds to vote, where 14 to 15-year-olds got a 1/4 vote, and 16 and 17-year-olds got a half a vote. There was a huge public outcry saying, "No, we can't let these kids vote. They're not mature enough. They don't understand what any of these issues mean."

It's like, okay, so we aren't mature enough to vote, but yet whenever a child gets involved in criminal activity, you say, "Oh, they knew right from wrong. We need to hold them to the same level of culpability as an adult." Make up your mind. Are we mature enough or are we not?

[00:27:48] Host: Can't serve in the military.

[00:27:49] Kirn: Well, yes. Argument is you can serve at 17, but you still require parents' permission.

[00:27:54] Host: Yes.

[00:27:55] Kirn: Again, do we have the maturation to make these decisions or not? The brain science--

[00:28:02] Host: I have a 16 year old, so I could say without a doubt, no.

[laughter]

[00:28:08] Kirn: I give this example when I lecture to people. Brain science has shown that maturation of the prefrontal cortex doesn't occur until your mid-20s. The prefrontal cortex is the executive decision-making center. Because of the fact that it's immature until your mid-20s, kids, a lot of times, they're all accelerator and no brake. That's why at a young age you think you're invincible and you don't realize-- "Why did you do what you did?" "I don't know." That's their response because they don't think about the consequences of their actions.

You see this a lot in the universities. How many times when you go to a university where you have a dorm. Freshman, sophomore dorm is crazy because kids are away from their parents for the first time. A lot of them drop out. Junior, senior dorm is a little calmer because the people who were mature at a young age are the ones finishing. Then when you go to the community colleges, you see a lot of these kids who dropped out at 19, 20. They went into the workforce for a little while, they hit their mid-20s, and then they go back to school, finish their general education requirements, and re-enrolled in university in their mid-20s and then finish their undergraduate degree.

[00:29:27] Host: Perform better than they would have at 18, 19.

[00:29:30] Kirn: Exactly. Why is that? It's because their brain matured. The amazing part is I'm in a room full of academics and they were like, "Oh, I never thought of it that way." You live that example. In the same way, people who unfortunately were exposed to negative influences at a young age, they fall prey to this. They fall prey to getting involved in negative behavior. Even the reforms I spoke of earlier where they reduced the culpability of those who weren't actively involved in the crime. Lots of times, those are kids who get caught up in that.

They got caught up in the negative behavior that an older influence had upon them. Lots of people now are going back to court. The court has to take into account the fact that they were under 25 at the time that this crime happened, and take that into consideration when determining whether or not placement in adult court is proper.

Everyone makes mistakes. Some mistakes are greater than others, obviously, but the mistakes that people make don't define who they are as people. I would hope that society learns to accept people with their flaws.

Unfortunately, society says we're a country of second chances, but yet the second chance only comes if your mistakes were only up to a certain degree. Once it gets past a certain level, then suddenly it's unforgivable.

[00:31:20] Host: We would like to thank Kirn Kim and API-RISE. Chapters podcast was produced by Past Forward and made possible with support from Chapman University and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library. For more information, visit pastforward.org, chapman.edu, and library.ca.gov.