Clutch Q&A: Dr. Aaron T. Kinzel, From Prison to Professor

You’ve described your trajectory as requiring more than personal resilience. What do you mean by that?

Individual resilience is real and necessary, but it is not sufficient on its own. What changes outcomes at a systemic level is mentorship — people who see something in you and make a decision to invest. For me, that was retired Michigan Department of Corrections Director Pat Caruso and Judge Donald Shelton. Both made deliberate choices to open doors that I could not have opened alone. I didn’t get where I am because I worked harder than everyone else who was incarcerated. I got here because the right people, at the right moments, decided I was worth investing in. That’s what we need to replicate at scale.

What does the research say about education and recidivism?

Education is the single strongest factor in reducing recidivism and increasing economic stability after release. Not the only factor — housing and employment matter enormously too — but education is foundational. It builds credentials, yes, but more importantly, it builds cognitive flexibility, social connection, and a relationship to future possibility that changes how people navigate the world. We should be investing massively in workforce training and educational programming for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. We’re not. The gap between what the evidence recommends and what we actually fund is significant.

You talk about trauma-informed approaches as essential. Why is that framing important?

Because almost everyone who comes into contact with the justice system has experienced significant trauma — before any contact with the system, often from a very young age. If you don’t understand that reality, you design systems that cause more trauma rather than promoting healing. Punishment-centered approaches that don’t recognize the trauma history of the people they process are not neutral. They are actively harmful. Trauma-informed design means asking whether your systems are re-traumatizing people or creating the conditions for recovery. Most of ours fail that test.

You’ve studied international models. What does the U.S. get wrong that other countries get right?

Countries like Norway start from a different premise: that incarceration is a temporary restriction of liberty designed to enable reintegration, not a punishment designed to degrade. The treatment of incarcerated people reflects dignity rather than dehumanization, and the outcomes reflect that. Lower recidivism. Better community stability. Lower long-term costs. The U.S. has built a system optimized for punishment, and we act surprised when punished people return worse than they left. The research on what works exists. The question is whether political culture will allow us to use it.

If you could choose two reforms to implement tomorrow, what would they be?

Massive investment in education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people — workforce training, academic programming, mentorship infrastructure. And elimination of mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimums strip judges of the discretion that would allow sentences to reflect individual circumstances. They produce sentences that are disproportionate, that lock people away for decades at the cost of families, communities, and any realistic chance of reintegration. The harm they cause echoes across generations. Getting rid of them is not leniency. It’s justice.

What do you say to people who are skeptical that someone with a significant criminal history can lead or influence?

I invite them to look at my work. That’s the only argument I have, and it’s the best one. People can doubt what I say about transformation. They cannot deny what I’ve built. That’s what second chances actually look like when the conditions for success exist — and it’s what we’re denying to thousands of people every year by refusing to create those conditions.