In Episode 5 of Just Cannabis, Host Mikelina Belaineh interviews Sandra Bowen, who was recently deported after serving a ten-year-long federal prison sentence for a cannabis conspiracy conviction. In the interview, Sandra discusses her pre-trial and incarceration experiences and details the challenges she’s faced rebuilding her life in a country where she has no community ties or sense of home. Sandra tells us how she is healing and emphasizes the importance of mental health support for directly impacted individuals and their children. 

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When Sandra was released from prison in 2021 she thought she would be returning home to celebrate with her family. 

Instead, she was taken into ICE custody and then deported to Jamaica. As soon as the prison gates opened, Sandra was met with a rushing cascade of collateral consequences. As our guest Stephanie Shepard told us in Episode 3, the punishment system is not set up to support redemption or healing, “they want repeat business”.   Two major challenges of Re-entry include finding housing and employment. As a black woman in this world, finding safe, stable housing and gainful employment is already a daunting task. To accomplish this while on probation, with a felony record, after a decade of incarceration, in a new country can feel impossible. Additionally, there is usually a list of things the court will demand as part of an individual's supervised release. When someone is sentenced to a form of community supervision (probation, parole, supervised release) the individual is released from jail or prison into the community and is surveilled/monitored by an agent of the system, usually a probation or parole officer. As part of the sentence, the court will often mandate “conditions of release”. The court says, “We are going to release you from your incarceration, and you’re allowed to live in the community, but to keep your physical freedom, you must fulfill the following conditions…” The court often will mandate specific weekly programming, drug testing, check-ins appointments with your probation officer, and more. 

Usually, the conditions include activities that require time, access to transportation, and money– resources not so readily available to recently released individuals. 

The general public rarely sees the fines & fees associated with arrest and incarceration. The costs of incarceration, drug testing, GPS monitoring, and court-mandated programming, are often pushed down onto the people being policed and punished. Many states and localities rely on these fines and fees to fund their court systems or even basic government operations. Our criminal legal system victimizes, traumatizes, and then charges for the financial cost of the harm perpetrated. Imagine someone stole from you and then sent you an invoice for how much it cost for them to steal your stuff.  Except here, it’s not stuff, it’s people’s lives and livelihoods. The injustice cuts layers deep, and the punishment persists. Failure to comply with the conditions of release promptly can mean further punishment. Sometimes courts will give individuals only a couple of weeks to find housing and employment. Failure to succeed, or “comply”, can lead to a violation and trigger reincarceration. Failure to pay fines and fees can also lead to violation and re-incarceration. 

On top of these standard Reentry challenges, Sandra has the added hardship of being forced to rebuild her life in a country where she has no roots or support systems. 

Sandra joined Mikelina for a Zoom interview virtually from Jamaica, the country she was deported to. Though Sandra was born in Jamaica, it's not a place she ever called home. Sandra came to the United States with her family as a young child and spent the majority of her life in Brooklyn, New York. When she was young, her mother successfully filed for citizenship status. This privilege should have benefitted Sandra, but she was never formally sworn in. This small legal formality, unfortunately, had major consequences once she became a victim of criminal prosecution. 

The day that Sandra should have been granted her freedom and returned home to her family, she was instead released into ICE custody for round 2 of her punishment. Back in 2009, when Sandra was arrested and charged with cannabis conspiracy, she decided to fight and take her case to trial. 5 days before trial, the prosecution threatened that if she did not take the plea deal they were offering, they would go after her father & son and would pursue extreme and harsh sentences for both (30 years to life). To consolidate the harm, in an attempt to save her father and son, Sandra conceded to the plea deal. Sandra did not know that by signing the plea deal, she was signing away her right to remain in the United States upon release. 

This was her first time being arrested or charged. 

No one took the time to explain to her by signing the plea deal she was agreeing to be deported once her prison term was completed. When Sandra was taken into ICE custody, she tried to explain the situation to the immigration judge. She told the court how her mother had gone through all the steps, and that she had been a child. How can she be punished for something that was outside of her control? It was one missing checkbox at the end of a long, tedious, citizenship process. Unfortunately, nothing could be argued or considered. The binding agreement buried in the plea deal precluded any intervention. The fine print that no one chose to explain to her before she put pen to paper. Her plea for mercy fell on deaf ears. 

Sandra sold cannabis because it was a way for her to provide for her family as a young black single mom.

 Imagine, the scene is set in Brooklyn, New York, the city is deep in the turmoil of an ongoing War on Drugs waged by the government on and against black and brown communities. The country is pressed and pressured by the unbearable weight of a national economic crisis, further exacerbated by the perpetually growing costs of mass policing and punishment. As a young black single mom, Sandra didn’t have access to many chances or choices. She sold cannabis because it enabled her to care for her children, and yet her actions led to her kids suffering nonetheless. 

In this interview, you’ll hear about Sandra’s experience surviving pretrial incarceration and government intimidation tactics. 

She shares how she was able to preserve and strengthen her spirit despite the trauma and injustice she endured. Sandra talks about how she is rebuilding her life in Jamaica, working to make peace with being displaced from her home and her family once again. This time, there is no “release” or “end date” in sight. Throughout the interview Sandra emphasizes the ripple effect of her incarceration, lamenting the negative impact on her family and her children. 

She talks about her experience as a collective experience, a collective harm. Sandra emphasizes the importance of trauma healing and mental health resources for those who have been incarcerated as well as their families and children. She reminds us that this pain and these truths matter, and there will be collective consequences if unacknowledged & unaddressed. Cannabis criminalization and the War on Cannabis don't just impact the individual arrested and incarcerated, there is an entire ecosystem that surrounds each person taken away. To incarcerate a mother and remove her from the lives of her children is a violent act that cuts deep. The choice to punish creates wounds we do not yet know how to count or measure. These kids deserve to be made whole. They are directly impacted, though they are not incarcerated themselves.

The Cannabis industry is being built at a rapid rate, and our state and local decision-makers are rushing to figure out cannabis taxes and revenues, hungry for profits. Meanwhile, countless individuals, families, and entire communities wait for government and industry leaders to take accountability for decades of torment. We encourage you to listen to Sandra’s interview for the full story, and we hope this conversation will leave you curious and questioning. 

Listen to the full episode here.