WASHINGTON — D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Joel Caston is still adjusting to freedom. He was released on parole from the D.C. Jail late last year, after nearly three decades behind bars on a first-degree murder conviction.
“It’s a very humbling thing. It’s on-the-job training. I’m still learning that stuff. For me, it’s like I’m working overtime. Gosh, I haven’t even been in society for 90 days yet,” Caston said.
Upon his release, Caston said he could only think of his mother, who was waiting to greet him. “I was thinking, how's the queen? Is she ok? It's such a wonderful feeling because out of the 27 years of incarceration, maybe like 10 of those years I was unable to see her. So, man, it's like a blessing because time goes.”
During his 27 years of incarceration, Caston said he turned his life around. He earned his G.E.D., learned multiple languages, became a worship leader and financial literacy instructor to other inmates.
“To me, it made me want to dig harder. It made me want to study harder. It made me want to defy the odds,” Caston said. “No, you cannot put me in this box.”
At the D.C. Jail, he also started a program, 'Young Men Emerging,' which focused on teaching young men basic life skills to keep them from returning.
Now, as an elected city leader, Caston can fully focus on that effort. The D.C. Council passed legislation in 2020 that allows incarcerated felons to vote, which paved the way for Caston to run, while in jail, for a long-vacant ANC seat for 7F07 in Ward 7.
He still represents inmates at the D.C. Jail, the Harriet Tubman Women’s Shelter and a neighboring apartment complex.
“I have to live out my purpose and if part of my purpose is advocating for those who don’t have a voice, then that’s my job. That’s my assignment,” Caston said. “They’re written off and forgotten about. They’re a forgotten society. I know how that feels to be inside for almost three decades and literally forgotten. That’s not a good feeling.”
Caston said based on his own life story and those he mentored inside, it’s clear D.C.’s violence prevention efforts need to heavily target elementary school students. “We are thinking about 8th grade, 12th grade. Sometimes that may be too late,” Caston explained.
Caston remembers only a brief period when his life was simpler. He grew up in Anacostia and said his family was loving and seemingly perfect, until the D.C. crack epidemic, which was so pervasive, ravaged his home.
Caston said his father began using drugs, which pushed his mom and dad to split.
Then, in the 6th grade, Caston said he was forced to start selling drugs by a family friend, even to his siblings.
“It's almost like robbing your childhood in a sense. Your childhood was snatched from you,” Caston said.
The problems continued to spiral. In the summer of 1994, Caston was accused of murdering 18-year-old Rafiq Washington in a Southeast D.C. parking lot.
At 18, Caston was sentenced to life in prison and spent years in solitary confinement at 16 different prisons, he said. “Twilight zone. Twilight zone. When you’re that young, when I was a kid, I used to get in trouble, and you go to sleep and wake up and it’s gone. It was a bad dream. Days go by. Years go by."
"Here I am now, as a middle-aged man, very cognizant of the bad decisions I made in the past. Very grateful that by the grace of God, I have been redeemed and I do have a completely different outlook on life,” Caston said. "Even though I didn't fully comprehend the fact that I was sentenced to life, I felt, I'm not supposed to be here and I'm going to do everything within my rights to make sure I'm not the person you say that I am. I started from day one trying to transform myself."
Now that he’s out, Caston said, he’s also been busy thinking, what if? What if someone intervened and helped him in elementary school? “I wish I could have sequestered him. Completely removed him from that environment; that toxic environment he found himself in. He needed an out,” Caston described.
Caston says he will work to give others an out, not just in his city government capacity, but by focusing on his other passion: finances. He’s eager to help people better manage their money and invest.
“I feel good to be able to finally do the things that I always wanted to do,” he said.
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