Exclusive: Kwame Kilpatrick joins push for AI criminal justice reform

• Kilpatrick's goal: Use a technology that once seemed "crazy" to him to help more incarcerated people get the second chance they deserve, he told Axios in a sit-down interview.
• "You've got a lot of people sitting there because of paperwork," says Kilpatrick, who has filed paperwork for others and gone through his process.

Driving the news: Kilpatrick has joined the advisory board for the 20% Project, an initiative to help reduce the country's outsized mass incarceration using AI.

• The program with the Open-Source AI Foundation is launching nationally, with Kilpatrick as its Michigan point person.
• "I'll be the first to tell you, people disappear … and it's not just personal relationships that change, but business relationships … and whole governments forget about you, as well," he says. "We want to wake up people in government to say, hey, these are real people."

Flashback: Kilpatrick was sentenced 12 years ago, convicted of racketeering conspiracy and other crimes in public office.

• He was a popular, rising political star, the city's youngest mayor at age 31. His 2002-2008 mayorship was marred by scandal and his legacy is complex, with advocates for his release saying the sentence was unusual in its harshness.
• Trump commuted his sentence, meaning early release but not excusing the crime like a pardon. Kilpatrick spoke in support of Trump in 2024.
• Regarding his restitution case, Kilpatrick's statement to Axios was: "I will pay whatever I owe, we're just trying to ascertain what that is."

Acknowledging he's barred from some offices, he says he'll always want to be involved in some way with advocacy and policy. But, he adds, "I just don't want to be elected to absolutely nothing."

• "When I was a kid, my grandfather used to say, 'One good whooping might straighten you out,'" he says. "And that's a good whooping I got. So I am in a position where I'd rather serve the public from another position."

How it works: The 20% Project is using custom-built, open-source AI to "streamline and modernize" the challenging pardon and commutation process, per a news release.

• This AI tool can comb through data and review cases to recommend individuals be considered. It can eliminate biases, help legal teams and pardon review experts act more quickly, and connect incarcerated people with opportunities.
• The foundation argues this is an important example of how the technology — which can also be controversial for environmental, privacy and ethical reasons — can advance human rights.

Zoom out: The 20% Project's name comes from a particular statistic: The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but 20% of its prison population.

• Clemency can be used to remedy past legal policies or correct unjustly long sentences.
• President Biden's administration granted more than 4,000 commutations and 80 pardons, while the First Step Act passed under Trump made key reforms to reduce disproportionate sentences.

Zoom in: Michigan's prison population increased about 2% in 2023 to nearly 33,000 people, per a state Legislature report. That's drastically lower than the 2007 peak of 51,600.

• However, according to Safe and Just Michigan, sentence length remains a problem. The state has among the longest sentences in the country, with average minimum sentences rising from 8.9 years in 2012 to 12 years in 2022.

What they're saying: It isn't unprecedented for AI to be used in criminal justice, L.A.-based former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani tells Axios.

• "There's the perception that it's very hard to get a pardon or clemency and it's usually people who are politically well-connected," Rahmani says. "So maybe this will make things a little bit more fair, and you have some arguably neutral algorithm that isn't taking those factors into consideration."

What's next: The AI will be presented to state and local governments, as well as to Trump's recently appointed "pardon czar."

• In Michigan, Kilpatrick will soon begin introducing the 20% Project to officials and advocates.
• The foundation wants to provide unpaid consultancy to help streamline systems and pull together data on individual prisoners to move them through processes.

Between the lines: Kilpatrick sees criminal justice reform as part of his ministry, which he began with his wife in Georgia in 2022 and continues in Metro Detroit.

• The couple moved permanently back to the area about six months ago.
• Movemental Ministries holds services at the Novi Public Library and is looking for a building in Detroit, he says.

The bottom line: "We have to think different, act different, to get our arms around this issue that we have of this mass incarceration and this longevity of sentencing and people just losing themselves inside these cages," Kilpatrick says. "It's one of the problems that metastasizes out into communities, and we're not really doing all we can to help that problem."