Kim Kardashian West may be the most popular woman in the country… inside the prison system, at least.
The reality TV star and aspiring lawyer is being flooded with letters, calls, emails and social media messages from inmates or family members of the incarcerated, all of whom hope she can help get them out of prison, TMZ reported.
Word around the prison system is out that "she can offer non-violent offenders a path to freedom," TMZ noted.
In fact, the inmates are reportedly referring to Kim as "The Princess of Prison Reform."
There is some validity to the nickname. According to a May 7 report, Kim has quietly and successfully helped free 17 inmates over the past few months by funding the 90 days of Freedom campaign, which was spearheaded by lawyers Brittany K. Barnett and MiAngel Cody of the nonprofit law firm Decarceration Collective. The 17 inmates were all serving incredibly long sentences — some of them life sentences without parole — for low-level drug offenses.
Kim has been secretly paying for the legal efforts that are putting the goals of the newly enacted First Step Act — the most significant criminal justice reform legislation in years — to work.
Kim and her team are currently receiving hundreds of letters each week, and she's been very diligent about it, apparently setting aside time each night to filter through many of the inmate's stories. If she finds a case that she feels is worthy of further research, she then brings it to Brittany and MiAngel.
Of course, Kim's interest in prison reform first sparked last year when she helped commute the sentence of Alice Johnson, a great-grandmother who was incarcerated in October 1996 for a first-time nonviolent drug offense after she helped facilitate communications in a drug trafficking case. She then helped inmates from Florida and Tennessee get released. More than a dozen others have followed.