By Jenifer Warren
Times Staff Writer
July 5, 2007
Two decades later, Nolan won a seat in the state Assembly, where those
childhood scars drove him to fight for more prisons and tougher sentencing.
Nothing, he believed, was too bad for the bad guys.
Then Nolan became one of the bad guys.
In the mid-1990s, in one of the Capitol's most notorious political corruption
cases, federal authorities convicted him of racketeering and 13 others of
various charges in an FBI sting known as Shrimpscam.
Suddenly, the lock-'em-up Republican legislator was
on the wrong side of the bars.
Nolan's 26 months in prison ended a red-hot political career but spawned a
fascinating personal odyssey. Once a fiercely ambitious Assembly minority
leader, considered a promising candidate for governor, he morphed into a
humble, Bible-quoting ex-con who travels the country denouncing the American
penal system as a failure.
Today, Nolan says most prisons are human warehouses that squander billions of
tax dollars by doing nothing to guide inmates toward a productive future. The
sad result — in
"If hospitals were failing to heal two out of three patients, would we
continue to pour money into them?" Nolan asks. "Of
course not. So shame on those who defend the status
quo."
Nolan spreads his message as president of Justice Fellowship, an arm of
Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries, formed by another Republican who
spent time behind bars: onetime White House aide Charles Colson of Watergate
fame.
Earlier this year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Nolan to a "strike
team" charged with overhauling
Nolan's personal saga fuels his message with passion and credibility. A burly
57-year-old with thick gray hair, a jowly face and bright blue eyes, he
struggles with health problems, including Lyme disease and diabetes. Still, he
bounces from state to state to spur new thinking on prisons and prisoners.
An author, lecturer and member of two respected national commissions on prison issues, Nolan frequently testifies before congressional
committees and trumpets his cause on television talk shows. He punctuates his
conversations with quotations from an eclectic array of sources, including
Jesus, Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius and the French revolutionary Robespierre.
IN early May, in a Capitol homecoming of sorts, Nolan brought his message to
"I've sat on the dais, I know the political pressures they're responding
to," he said during a pause at a downtown cafe. "I tell them that
when I was in the Legislature, I really thought more prisons meant more public
safety. I really thought that when a criminal went through the prison gate, I
didn't need to worry about him any more."
That was a mistake, Nolan says now, because 95% of all prisoners eventually
return home. Then, "they're in line with me at Safeway, they're at the
park with my children, they're next to me on the bus," he says. "So
I'd better hope they've turned their lives around."
State Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) says Nolan's dual experiences as
politician and inmate make his pitch difficult to ignore.
"You can't go through what Pat experienced without being fundamentally
affected," McClintock said. "It made it possible for him to humanize
this issue in a very compelling way."
Nolan is not the only conservative with a changed perspective on sentencing and
the treatment of inmates. The debate over punishment is shifting in
Congress is weighing the Second Chance Act, a bill aimed at helping prisoners
reenter society. The legislation — co-sponsored by 27 Republicans — marks a
reversal of policies that made life tougher for parolees by cutting college
grants, barring drug felons from receiving student loans and erecting other
barriers to re-integrating.
"There is so much empirical evidence now on the ills of mass incarceration
that it's become almost impossible to ignore," said Michael Jacobson,
director of the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice and former corrections
commissioner for
The trajectory of Nolan's life gave little hint that he would devote his prime
years to helping felons shed their criminal ways.
The sixth of nine children, he grew up in the
His interest in politics — fanned when he volunteered for gubernatorial
candidate Ronald Reagan in 1966 — flourished when he enrolled at USC. With the
university bitterly divided over the Vietnam War, he helped found a campus
chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a group that launched a generation of
conservative politicians.
He also found time to learn horseback riding, and rode as Tommy Trojan in the
1974 Rose Parade.
After
NOLAN'S drive and charm quickly drew notice in the statehouse, and his
staunchly conservative values prompted others to dub him and some GOP allies
"the Cavemen." By 1984, the lawmaker from
But in 1994, the big dreams collapsed.
After he was secretly videotaped accepting checks from an undercover FBI agent,
Nolan was accused of using his office to solicit illegal campaign
contributions. Though proclaiming his innocence and denouncing the federal
government's tactics in the investigation, he ultimately pleaded guilty to a
single racketeering charge. Nolan said he accepted the plea bargain because he
feared a longer sentence if convicted by a jury.
Today, Nolan avoids talk of his own case, calling it a "distraction"
that diverts attention from his message. "If I get into it, it looks like
I'm trying to justify or promote myself," he says. "It's in the past,
and we can't un-ring that bell." But he does talk openly — and soberly —
of the shock, loneliness and despair he experienced after tumbling from his
position of political prestige to his lowly status as inmate No. 06833-97.
Although fear and isolation were the most obvious new realities, Nolan said the
continual verbal abuse from prison officers was the most difficult to endure.
"You're an amputee, cut off from family, community, job, church, and, with
your stump still bleeding, you're tossed into this boiling cauldron of anger,
hatred, bitterness, sexual repression, and you're totally disrespected —
screamed at — by officers all the time," Nolan recalled.
"You are sneered at with venom and told repeatedly, 'You ain't got nothing coming.' The
implication is that you are nothing, you've come from nothing and you will be
nothing. You are worthless. You have no future. None."
Nolan said he withstood the experience partly by renewing his Catholic faith.
But he realized that for inmates who lacked his education and strong family
support, the message that they were scum — coupled with the absence of any
meaningful job training, education or counseling — was a recipe for disaster.
"As a legislator, I had assumed that our prisons were not only preparing
people for success upon release, but also helping these damaged men develop a
moral compass, and ensuring that they analyzed the bad decisions that got them
in trouble," Nolan said. "I was wrong."
As his parole date approached, Nolan considered his options. A few insurance
companies offered him work as a rainmaker, and there were research positions
available at law firms. Then, through what he believes was divine intervention,
an offer came from Colson and Prison Fellowship.
The job allowed him to campaign for change in a system that he felt was
dangerously flawed and to spend more time with his wife, Gail, and three
children, Courtney, Katie and Jamie.
"I really believed that God allowed me to go through this experience, all
the pain of it, partly to prepare me to share with others the message that
there is a better way, a way to have safer communities and help people leave
prison better than when they came in," Nolan said.
DURING his
As well-heeled executives nibbled on fruit salad, he began — in a slow, soft
voice — to share his story of incarceration and remind the guests that more
than 650,000 inmates leave American prisons and go home each year.
"There are not enough cops on the street to stop everyone tempted to do
something bad," Nolan told the crowd. "So we need to help them
develop inner restraint and moral standards. And we need to give them
jobs."
A few heads nodded in agreement. But several guests murmured to each other
about the risks they would face if they hired the wrong guy.
Nolan continued, relating the story of a manufacturing company in
"Give them a second chance, as we've been given a second chance, for our
mistakes in life," Nolan urged in closing. "That's how we'll build
safer communities."
After the conference, Nolan walked through downtown
Jaramillo, 41, spent nearly half his life cycling in and out of prison for drug
dealing, auto theft and other crimes. Finally, he got his head straight and
landed a rare spot in a prison job-training program. He now owns 17 residential
centers designed to help parolees smoothly reenter the free world.
Nolan hurried over to Jaramillo, placed a hand on his massive shoulder.
"I just want you to know," he said quietly, "how much I admire
what you have done."
They clasped hands, locked eyes, two ex-cons sharing a
moment anchored in a common experience.
Then