A selection of The Imprint’s most impactful stories from the past year
Cordell Miller was sentenced to 97 years for a crime he committed at age 17 following an adolescence marked by abuse and homelessness. Three decades later, he was free.
In “A Second Look,” reporter Sylvia A. Harvey chronicles Miller’s life, from the early traumatic experiences that propelled him into the drug trade as a teenager, to his 30 years living in prison, and then being freed, but deported to a country he had barely any connection to.
Harvey also reports on the evolving policies around youth offenders, such as the Second Law Amendment Act passed by Washington, D.C., that gave Miller another path to freedom. James Zeigler, founder and co-executive director of Second Look Project, describes the law as making D.C. “a more just and equitable place, and to try and remediate the mistakes of our overly punitive past.”
