Gov. Jerry Brown has issued more than 1,100 pardons and commuted more than 150 sentences since taking office in 2011 — far more than have his recent predecessors — with the latest announced Nov. 21. The governor’s intervention creates a new pathway to justice for people serving long prison sentences under some of the nation’s harshest sentencing laws. His action moves California away from the brutality of mass incarceration and toward a renewed focus on rehabilitation and redemption. “I think there is wisdom,” Brown said in September, “in having the possibility of hope.”

I know well the power of hope in the darkness behind prison walls.

In 2012, I was released after serving 24 years of a life sentence. My path to prison was an all-too-familiar one. As a child, I had an unstable home and attended seven different schools in seven different neighborhoods. Teachers labeled me troubled and said I was destined to fail. Hope felt elusive. At age 16, I dropped out of school and became heavily involved in gang activity, behavior that led to a life sentence at the age of 18.

My release was hard earned. I was denied parole eight times, each denial a reminder that I may spend the rest of my life in prison. But I wanted to be there for my daughter. She inspired me to change, and I maintained hope that one day we would be reunited. I worked to transform my life through education, helping others, accepting responsibility, and planning for a life after release.

Now I lead the Hope and Redemption Team, an initiative funded by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide rehabilitative programming inside seven state prisons. Our model is unique. Every member of our full-time staff is a former lifer who has served decades of time and is now a living example of redemption.

Men once without hope look to us and see new possibility. Through peer-to-peer mentoring, we help incarcerated men transform their lives, acquire the tools to successfully re-enter society, and serve as role models for at-risk youth. Most of the men we serve were in their teens or early 20s when they began their life sentences.

In just over a year, more than 2,000 men have completed our program, but the scale of incarceration far exceeds our reach. Thirty percent of California’s prisoners — nearly 40,000 people — are serving a life sentence, including 5,100 serving life without the possibility of parole. That’s more than the number of people serving life sentences in Florida, New York and Texas combined. Many were sentenced at the peak of mass incarceration in California, when politicians waged a “tough on crime” arms race to enact the most extreme sentencing laws.

All these men and women, to borrow the insight of defense lawyer Bryan Stevenson, are more than the worst thing they have ever done. They are friends, mentors and neighbors. They are members of families and communities that are fractured without them. They are human beings who may have inflicted harm upon others but who themselves have also endured great harm. With guidance and opportunity, they are capable of profound change and deserving of redemption.

Success stories rarely make the news, but I see them every day. Graduates of our program and job-readiness training offered by the Anti-Recidivism Coalition have earned their release and built careers in the building and construction trades, prison ministry, higher education, entertainment and tech. Trained in violence prevention, they go into juvenile halls and work with youth to break the cycle of incarceration before it begins. They are contributing to society and making communities stronger and safer — things that prison can never accomplish.

Brown has made a holiday tradition of reuniting families through pardons and commutations, a practice he should continue in his final weeks in office. But much work remains.

Continued reform efforts should focus on those serving the longest and harshest sentences. Let’s give them the tools needed to grow and change. Let’s rethink the need for life sentences, an almost uniquely American penalty. And let’s continue to change the culture of fear and anger that drove prison policy for decades.

Sam Lewis is the director

of inside programs at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition

in Los Angeles.