PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Gov. Tom Wolf traveled to South Philadelphia Thursday to highlight pardons as a powerful workforce tool.
He visited the NoMo Foundation, an anti-violence non-profit that provides vocational training for young adults.
“We all deserve the opportunity to learn by our mistakes,” said Wolf. “Show me someone who has never made a mistake … well, you can’t show me someone who has never ever made a mistake.”
Wolf talked about the importance of justice reform and the need for second chances for those who are, or were, incarcerated.
He said he is celebrating more than 2,000 pardons that he has signed in nearly eight years in office, more than any other Pennsylvania governor. He also responded to his critics.
“To the charge of actually giving people a second chance in life, [I am] proudly guilty,” Wolf said.
“It’s like a 500-pound gorilla,” Tarik Ryant expressed after being given total forgiveness of a criminal conviction. “I’m not carrying it anymore.”
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Ryant served seven years in prison for aggravated assault. Since then, he went to school, became a chef, and is about to open up his third business.
He says being pardoned brings a big relief.
“These doors have opened because of having a pardon,” Ryant explained.
The Wolf administration has also opened applications for the Marijuana Pardon Project, allowing people with certain minor marijuana convictions on their record to get them removed.
“We still have work to do,” said Wolf.
“We need to keep prioritizing pardons. We need to give Pennsylvanians the chance to get a clean slate. We need to support, in a much better way than we are, re-entry [to society]. So I have taken major steps to reform our criminal justice system, to lower barriers that Pennsylvanians face, but again we still have a long way to go.”