Strategies for Release

Lilian Tintori, an internationally recognized human rights advocate and the wife of former political prisoner Leopoldo López (the 2022 Robert G. Wesson Lecturer in International Relations Theory and Practice at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies), spoke candidly about her seven-year struggle to secure her husband’s release. “It is not easy,” she stated, “You become the voice of the political prisoner. You can’t talk, you have to scream in every crevice, every place, every moment you get.” 

Tintori argues that the most important aspect for release is a community of resilience, which is to provide mental health and emotional support to political prisoners’ families, as they cannot act as the voice if they feel broken themselves. At the heart of this strength, she argued, is love. In her efforts, she now distributes the Pathway to Freedom handbook, produced through her organization, the World Liberty Congress, to help families navigate the grueling road to release.

“Torture only occurs because the Maduro regime knows we are the majority,” Tintori clarified. Since the beginning of 2025, five political prisoners in Venezuela have died in custody. Tintori emphasized the importance of protecting the life of the person being detained — the human being behind the titles of activist, mayor, or opposition leader, beyond a simple number. To raise awareness about political prisoners alike, Tintori often employs the strategy of always mentioning “other political prisoners” after their loved ones’ names. This keeps the broader community of victims in public consciousness.

With international and local channels to plead for help closing, such as the EU or historically, the U.S., all three panelists stressed that silence is not an option for all communities — including academic spheres — and the broader public. Tintori testified that after public pressure, the regimes do pay attention and often send proof of life to suppress further outrage, hence helping to protect prisoners until their release.

Ways to Support A Political Prisoner 

Having been a political prisoner himself after co-founding the April 6th Youth Movement in Egypt, Waleed Shawky recounted what he believed carried him through his time behind bars — the cause he fought for. Upholding the values and vision that led to their arrest, he argued, can provide hope and dignity in the most inhumane conditions. “Being a victim is a choice as a prisoner, because you can choose to be a survivor,” Shawky asserted, “It is important to remind them of the bigger picture.” 

Echoing Tintori’s previous statements, Shawky praised the courage of the families, particularly women, who visit and support prisoners, often at great personal risk. He also warned against idolizing or victimizing political prisoners. “They’re human,” he emphasized. “Don’t cry in front of them. Be strong; they need your strength.”

Authoritarian Crackdowns and Resistance

Gulika Reddy highlighted the challenges advocates operating in authoritarian contexts face and how they navigate these challenges. She broke it down into three different categories: movements, organizations, and individuals.

• Movements are often delegitimized and co-opted. Reddy stressed the importance of engaging in grounded movement building, offering counter-narratives to sustain public trust, and fostering solidarity and collective action.

• At the organizational level, regimes may block formal registration, restrict funding, and launch physical or digital attacks — including office raids and data seizures. To survive these assaults, organizations can diversify financial models, invest in digital security, and cultivate collective care to mitigate burnout and trauma. Additionally, there is a need to adopt diverse theories of change in contexts where traditional human rights tactics prove ineffective.

• For individuals, threats include intimidation and retaliation, which can also extend to their loved ones. Reddy recommended conducting risk assessments and creating mitigation and response plans, including access to free legal aid and safe housing.

What we learned from our speakers is clear: authoritarianism thrives on silence, but freedom depends on our voices. For political prisoners around the world, solidarity, resilience, and an unwavering defense of human dignity are not just ideals; they are lifelines that can bring them home.

Argument & Key Findings

The system of reentry institutions — including halfway houses, parole agencies, and housing assistance programs — can be extremely complicated for formerly incarcerated persons (FIPs) to navigate. These complications are not merely logistical, but also social and emotional: the ways in which FIPs interact with reentry institutions can affect their sense of belonging, dignity, and prosperity. When the rules and practices of reentry institutions undermine these needs, it becomes more likely that participants will violate rules, withdraw from the institutions altogether, or find themselves reincarcerated. 

In “Home But Not Free,” Gillian Slee offers a rich analysis of these socioemotional dynamics. The paper both increases our knowledge of reentry processes and deepens our understanding of FIPs and reentry staff. Previous scholars have focused more on how adverse outcomes stem from reentry institutions prioritizing surveillance or control. Slee pushes forward this conversation by highlighting how adverse outcomes also stem from failures to acknowledge and support the dignity of FIPs.

Slee’s paper is informed by over two years of ethnographic fieldwork with FIPs in Philadelphia. This includes observing over 200 appointments at a housing assistance program, analyzing more than 130 files of program participants, and both observing and assisting with programming at a women’s halfway house. 
 

Three Mechanisms:

The core of the paper centers on Slee’s elaboration of three mechanisms that link socioemotional concepts, such as indignity, to outcomes like withdrawal or reincarceration. Each mechanism is clarified through a range of examples and case studies.

1. Unrecognized vulnerability:

Reentry institutions and their staff often fail to recognize or respond to the constraints and vulnerabilities faced by FIPs. These failures can undermine the dignity of FIPs and provoke their withdrawal from such institutions. In the realm of housing assistance, the Philadelphia program requires that rent falls between 30% and 45% of participants’ income. However, this is often unrealistic given the difficulties of finding fairly priced units or securing gainful employment with a felony conviction. Accordingly, FIPs must seek low-quality units or roommates. Yet most participants do not want roommates because it reminds them of being incarcerated. Participants are thus presented with an undignified set of choices. The program restrictions mean that many FIPs cannot or will not utilize housing assistance programs, deepening their sense of instability.

Another source of vulnerability concerns the mismatch between FIPs’ expectations and the realities of frontline bureaucracy. For example, many housing assistance programs have too few staff, some of whom struggle to juggle appointments or return phone calls. Because reentry staff are overburdened, they may ask participants to pick up the slack by searching for housing units. Yet many FIPs lack the requisite know-how, for example, calling about units too frequently or too early in the morning. Others may show up hours early for their appointments, in the process annoying reentry staff. Yet participants are not coached on how to improve these behaviors, leading to neglect. Other FIPs must learn that the majority of units are listed online as opposed to in newspapers, incurring the mockery from reentry staff in the process. 

A final source of vulnerability concerns participants’ lack of efficacy — the sense that their efforts make little difference or are inadequate. Reentry staff may have high expectations of people who feel “cryogenically frozen in time” (p. 32) because of years of incarceration. Some are unable to use modern cell phones or have no rental history.
 

2. Discretion’s Benefits and Drawbacks:

The discretion exercised by reentry staff introduces difficult choices for participants, forcing them to choose between (a) following the rules and becoming socially isolated or (b) breaking the rules and developing social connections. For example, some halfway houses are restrictive about time spent outside of the house. Participants who abide by the rules may miss out on socially important events, like a child’s basketball game. Some FIPs may lie about or conceal where they live in order to deal with less intrusive parole agents. Others may cross state lines to pursue important career opportunities. One participant parked their mobile home outside of the parole district lines because it was less expensive and easier than seeking alternative units, but these kinds of ‘rational’ behaviors cannot be accommodated. Discretion is a highly variable attribute: some reentry staff cancel meetings and inconvenience participants, while others remember individuals’ needs and accommodate them. Those who expect more discretion than they receive may break the rules out of frustration. Ultimately, discretion and its absence can provoke a host of socioemotional problems.
 

3. Risk-Escalating Rules:

Instead of preventing noncompliance, program rules may serve to encourage it when they undermine participants’ sense of dignity. For example, 29 states prohibit associating with other FIPs, yet many participants have friends or family supervised by the system; as such, people violate the rules in order to preserve meaningful relationships. Some FIPs are faced with painful dilemmas, for example, choosing between living in halfway houses where drug use is common or breaking the rules by leaving. Others report using cocaine instead of marijuana because the latter can be detected in their bloodstream for much longer. Some halfway houses mandate spending a certain number of hours inside the house, but this leads to participants being unable to work multiple jobs to support themselves, a clear violation of their dignity.

For many FIPs in uncomfortable halfway houses, they cannot be placed in another house unless they break the rules of their existing house; some consider breaking the rules for the sake of their well-being, even though doing so might land them under even more restrictive supervision. One participant was refused permission to live in a camper that he could afford because the camper’s mobility posed a flight risk. Another participant broke the rules by traveling out of state because her son’s father had cancer, and a reentry professional later told her to return in a rather threatening way. The rules of reentry institutions thus incentivized FIPs to make very risky choices.
 

By highlighting socioemotional concepts — especially (in)dignity — as central to the experiences of formerly incarcerated persons, Slee shows how the rules and practices of reentry institutions can undermine reintegration. Addressing sources of vulnerability and counterproductive rules may help reform reentry institutions in more humane and effective ways.

Kathryn Stoner, the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), introduced the panelists, and Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, moderated the discussion.

On the frontlines, outnumbered Ukrainian troops have waged a stiff resistance, while a mass influx of Russian troops, with enormous loss of life, have made incremental but not decisive progress. Hundreds of thousands have died or been injured on both sides. Talks to end the war are underway between the Trump Administration and Russia, with Ukraine and European nations not currently invited to participate.

‘We will cease to exist’

Matviichuk, who was a visiting scholar from 2017-2018 with the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program at CDDRL, noted the conflict has actually been going on for 11 years, since 2014 when Russia invaded and occupied Crimea. Today, she said, there is no safe place in Ukraine where people can hide from Russian rockets. “Just two days ago, Russia sent 263 drones against Kyiv and other peaceful cities in Ukraine.”

Matviichuk described how Russia seeks to ban the Ukrainian language and culture, and how they take Ukrainian children to Russia to put them in Russian education camps. “They told them they are not Ukrainian children, but they are Russian children.”

If the West does not provide Ukraine with security guarantees in a peace plan, then “it means that we will cease to exist. There will be no more of our people,” Matviichuk said.

Oleksandra Ustinova, a member of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's Parliament, said, “If we talk about life in Ukraine now, it's complicated, especially during the last week after the Munich Security Conference,” where Vice President JD Vance delivered a speech that focused on internal politics in Europe.

“People do not understand how we thought the United States was our biggest partner,” she said.
 

At one point, Ustinova noted that she could not hear the conversation in her headphones because sirens were blaring as Russia had just launched an aerial attack on Kyiv.

She said that Russian President Putin and others who seek a Ukrainian election are trying to set a trap because Ukrainian law does not allow an election during martial law, which Ukraine has declared because of the Russian invasion. Plus, it would involve the demobilization of more than 400,000 troops.

“It would be very easy to fake elections, and that’s what the Russians would do,” Ustinova said. “It’s a trap. They're going to find where to put the money into their own candidate.”

Ustinova, who was also a visiting scholar with the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program from 2018-2019, said, “We can see that this is a new reality, not only in the Ukrainian war, but in foreign relations, and hopefully the Europeans can unite. Because if they don't, it will be a disaster for everyone.”

Oleksiy Honcharuk, a former Ukrainian prime minister from 2019-2020 who was the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at FSI in 2021, said, “I think that we are still strong. My prediction is that in three or six months, Ukraine can double the damage to Russia on the battlefield from a technological perspective with drones.”

But time is very expensive now, he added, because every single day, every single hour, Ukrainians are paying with the lives of their best people and soldiers.

Honcharuk said Ukrainians are “shocked” about the position of the United States’ recent vote against a United Nations resolution condemning the Russian invasion as well as the Trump Administration’s position on talks with Russia.

“This is exactly the moment when all the people of goodwill should do everything possible to support Ukraine in this very complicated time,” said Honcharuk.

Regarding the UN vote, McFaul said, “I am shocked, I am appalled, I am embarrassed as an American to see those votes today. We are voting with the most horrific dictators in the world.”

‘Not about people’

Matviichuk said, “Putin started this war of aggression, not because he wanted to occupy just more Ukrainian land. Putin started this war of aggression because he wanted to occupy and destroy the whole of Ukraine and even go further. He wants to forcibly restore the Russian Empire — he dreams about his legacy, his logic is historical.”

This ultimately means that Ukraine needs real security guarantees, she said. “President Trump said he started the peace negotiation because he cares about people dying in this war. So, if President Trump cares about people dying in this war, he also has to care about people dying in Russian prisons.”

She explained that she’s spoken with hundreds of people who have survived brutal conditions in Russian captivity. And so, it’s surprising, Matviichuk said, to hear political statements from U.S. officials “about natural minerals and elections, about possible territorial concessions, but not about people.”

Lack of Global Support

Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff, spoke about the recent overtures by the Trump Administration to Russia.

“This is a new reality we are living in now. Frankly, my understanding is that Ukrainians are not very shocked with what's going on because we went through so many shocks within the last three years.”

Acknowledging the lack of an American flag at an allied event this week in Kyiv, Leshchenko said Ukrainians know perfectly well that perception is reality.

“It means that now we have an absolutely different perception. So, it’s obvious that there is no global security infrastructure anymore. It’s obvious that NATO is not an answer anymore,” said Leshchenko, an alumnus of the 2013 cohort of CDDRL’s Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program.

‘Sad occasion’

In her opening remarks, Stoner noted, “We’re here on what is actually a sad occasion, which is that Feb. 24 marks three years since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

She said, “Only about less than 1% of land has changed hands since December 2022, so Ukraine is not losing. Ukraine is at least defending what it has, and it remains in Kursk (Russia).”

McFaul said, “It’s in our national interest that we do not line up with Belarus and Russia and North Korea – that holds negative consequences for our future security and prosperity. I actually think our country cares about values.”

He added that the notion that all America cares about is mineral rights, business deals, and hotels in Gaza is not the America he knows.

McFaul told the panelists, “I've witnessed and observed what you’ve been doing for your country, and we are just extremely fortunate to be connected to all of you, whom I consider to be heroic individuals in the world.”

A full recording of the event can be viewed below, and additional commentary can be found from The Stanford Daily.