From Oregon prison to college basketball captain, Brett Hollins helps prisoners find purpose and hope

Earlier this month, Brett Hollins embarked on a road trip to Oregon from his parents’ home in San Antonio. He didn’t come to experience the high desert splendor of Central Oregon or to snap selfies at Multnomah Falls. He came to present workshops and play basketball with inmates at six prisons across the state, including Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario and Warner Creek Correctional Facility in Lakeview, both of which he once served time in.

In 2017, Hollins was sentenced to nearly six years in prison after pleading guilty to stabbing two men during a brawl that broke out during a party he and his friends attended near the campus of Southern Oregon University in Ashland. In 2021, then-Gov. Kate Brown commuted his sentence after he had served nearly four years of his six-year sentence.

The Oregonian/OregonLive sports writer Bill Oram has extensively profiled Hollins’ amazing journey of rehabilitation, including his decision to return to Ashland to play college basketball at Southern Oregon University, where he graduated last June and served as a team captain. More recently, Oram wrote about Hollins’ return to Snake River to play basketball and inspire adults in custody with workshops he developed through his new nonprofit, the Side Door Foundation. Hollins joins us along with Michael Reese, director of the Oregon Department of Corrections, to share their perspectives on rehabilitation and the obstacles to it inside and outside of prison.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Earlier this month, Brett Hollins took a road trip from his parents’ home in San Antonio to Oregon. He did not come as a tourist. He came to present workshops and play basketball with inmates at six prisons across the state, including Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario and Warner Creek Correctional Facility in Lakeview. In both of those cases, it was a kind of homecoming because Hollins once served time in those prisons.

In 2017, Hollins pleaded guilty to stabbing two men during a college party near Southern Oregon University. He was sentenced to nearly six years in prison and then ended up serving about four of those years before then Governor Kate Brown commuted his sentence in 2021. From there, Hollins went back to SOU, this time as a student and a basketball player. I should note that Bill Oram, a sports writer for The Oregonian, has written extensively and movingly about Hollins’ journey of rehabilitation.

Brett Hollins joins me now. It’s great to have you on the show.

Brett Hollins: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Miller: What do you most remember about your first few weeks in prison?

Hollins: Those first few weeks were definitely a challenge. If anybody were to tell you that going in there they weren’t afraid after never experiencing something like that, they’re lying. I was definitely scared and understanding, learning how to navigate that system. It’s a completely different world with completely different perspectives and outlooks on life and situations. So I definitely spent my first few weeks kind of in my own little bubble talking to people trying to understand what was OK, what wasn’t

Miller: Who could you talk to? Who did you feel like you could trust?

Hollins: That took a while, but what I realized initially, prisons are very political. They can be divided racially. At first, I really only talked to the people that I was told that I could talk to. These are the people that look like me, the people of other African Americans. And I realized I was leaving a lot on the table by not talking to people of other backgrounds and other races. They had a lot of wisdom that they could give to me just about life in general, but also about how to take advantage of this time that I was dealing with.

Miller: In Bill Oram’s reporting, he notes that in those first days or weeks, you were sleeping basically all the time.

Hollins: Yeah.

Miller: You would wake up for check-ins to show the correctional officers that you were there. But it seemed like you were sleeping and depressed.

Hollins: That was really close to my first year.

Miller: Not just weeks but a year?

Hollins: Close to my first year.

Miller: Was there a turning point?

Hollins: Yeah, my first year I was definitely not doing time in a productive way. I was doing drugs and I was sleeping all day because I was buying people’s sleeping medication. So I would spend all of my time sleeping. I probably got down to about 170 pounds at 6 ‘4”, and I walk around a lot heavier than that. And because I wasn’t eating, I lost all this weight and I was just very demotivated, very discouraged, defeated, truly.

There was a time where I was outside, I was on the yard, that’s where we go out to work out, that’s the recreational area. It’s called the yard and I was sitting there and I looked around and I realized that there were a lot of people hurting. There were a lot of people that were going through the same thing that I was going through, just lost walking in circles – because that’s what you do out there, you walk on the track. And that was really an analogy for all of our lives at that point.

Miller: Walking, going nowhere.

Hollins: Just going nowhere, stuck in a loop going nowhere, walking in a circle, not really knowing what to do with ourselves. I realized that I have the ability to kind of do something about that and to try to help these people. And at that point, I kind of took it on myself to try to change the culture in there and try to help people understand that your life doesn’t have to end here.

Miller: Wait, so, it’s a little bit surprising because your first inclination was I’m gonna try to help. I mean, you were going through this yourself, but you had this thought, “I want to try to help other people,” not, “I want to try to get out of this dark hole I’m in myself?”

Hollins: Yeah, I think that being selfless can be very selfish at the same time, in a way. The moment I stopped focusing so much on my issues and what I was dealing with, and really started focusing on the things that other people were struggling with, days would go by where I realized I didn’t even have time to think about my own problems and my own issues. So by uplifting other people, it turned the magnifying glass from everything that I was struggling with and it truly did boost my spirit and boost my mood, knowing that I was making a difference selflessly but selfishly. It helped me so much with my perspective and not just laying in self-pity.

Miller: In Bill Oram’s coverage, he notes that people started to call you Rev when you’re in prison or other variations of the Reverend. Why?

Hollins: I was just a really positive dude and people would always say, “oh, you’re you’re preaching” and they would call me the preacher because I was constantly trying to de-escalate situations. I would try to keep fights from happening and just keep everybody copacetic. And this is where we live, so why should we walk around with anxiety and this fear that something could happen. So I was kind of used as the person to kind of bridge the gap between other races and and other cultures there. That’s when the name Rev came, because people would just come to me with their problems and I wasn’t afraid to pray for somebody in the yard.

Miller: So it wasn’t just general positivity. You also were a man of faith?

Hollins: Absolutely, absolutely. I read my Bible every day and I definitely did put some prayers up, “God, please get me out of this situation. I promise I will never turn my back on you again.” Obviously, that wasn’t his plan for me, but his plan for me at that point was, well, I’m gonna use you where you’re at to try to make a positive impact in here.

Miller: What opportunities for rehabilitation did you have when you were behind bars? Because as you’ve described it so far, everything feels very internal – both the dark first year when you were isolated, and then seeing other people in your situation and realizing you want to make their lives better – all that seems like it’s coming from within you. What opportunities do you have from the prison system to make your life better?

Hollins: So there’s definitely things that happen in there that are meant to help change your perspective or provide life skills. The first class that I took was anger management because I knew that if I wanted to make the impact that I wanted to make on society, my anger and my pride was the first thing that had to go. That’s what got me into the situation that I was in. After that, there’s things like yoga, there’s Bible studies, and there’s a class called GOGI, Get Out By Going In, and I was the facilitator for that course. Teaching that, I realized there’s something missing here. The programming that we did have, there was a lack of depth to it. Everything was pretty surface level, so that was when I started creating my own program in there called the I3 and that’s what we teach now. That we’ve got to teach and teach in two different states.

Miller: What did basketball mean to you when you were inside?

Hollins: Basketball was kind of like home base for me. It was that grounding point and it was the one thing that I could do that felt normal. It felt exactly how it felt being back in the community.

Miller: Is it the same size court inside?

Hollins: Very close, the rim is still 10 feet. There’s still five players on it. The cool thing about basketball in prison though is that it is kind of like the area where people of different races get to come together and participate in something. So that’s not separated through races.

Miller: And as you’re saying before, that’s that’s relatively unusual. Most other parts of life you experienced when you were in prison was much more racially separated or segregated?

Hollins: Yeah, but that was just because of the culture that people thought they had to live in. So like I said, my job was to try to break that culture apart because it didn’t really make sense.

Miller: When you were playing basketball, could you ever forget for 10 seconds at a time, for a minute at a time, that you were in prison?

Hollins: Um …

Miller: Can you ever forget that? Your pause makes me think the answer is no.

Hollins: So what I like to call it is moments of clarity. I knew that I was gonna go home and play college basketball. I had already made that up in my mind, that was what I was gonna do unless I somehow came home paralyzed. I was gonna go home and play basketball. So playing with the other adults in custody, never. I never had that moment where it felt like I wasn’t in prison. Training by myself is when that moment of clarity would hit where I was no longer surrounded by this brick wall and these barbed wire fences.

Miller: Because you were imagining your future, you’re working towards a future? So it wasn’t that you ever forgot where you were, but you could imagine where you would be later if you did that work?

Hollins: Yes, I created those moments where it felt like I was inside of a college stadium. I felt like I was playing in front of coaches, in front of fans. And for that moment, I wasn’t in prison. I was living in the moment that I was gonna create in the future.

Miller: Can you describe the letters that you wrote more than 100 times to college basketball coaches while you were in prison?

Hollins: Yeah, I wrote about 115 letters to coaches all over the country. I did, I did not care who it was. I sent letters to Coach K …

Miller: At Duke.

Hollins: Yeah, like at Duke, UNC, UCLA. I knew that all it would take is for one coach to believe in the man that I was becoming. And I felt confident that I could play anywhere. So I sent them out and pretty much what I told them is, “Hey my name is Brett Hollins. This is what I’m in here for. This is what I’m doing now. This is what I think that I can do for you in the future. I’m not asking for a scholarship. I will pay my way forward. I’m just asking that you give me the opportunity to show you that I am a better man and that I can help your team win.”

I ended up getting back 17 letters, which is still great. I really didn’t expect to get back one. It was kind of just a pass time. But the first letter that I got back was from Oregon State University coach Wayne Tinkle and his letter was beautiful. It was beautiful because it wasn’t this Disney Channel fairy tale promise of come here, you’re gonna be the star player. His letter was, “From me to you, I believe that you’re a good man. And when you get home, whether it’s playing for me or playing for someone else, I’m gonna help you see this dream come true.” That was all he had to say.

And I had those letters. I received other letters from other coaches, but I had them taped above my bunk and that was what I would wake up every morning to see.

Miller: Can you tell us about the moment that you heard that Governor Kate Brown had commuted your sentence?

Hollins: And it was a random Tuesday and I got called down to the admin building. They called me over the speaker, “Hollins, report to admin.” And I worked in the admin building, so I didn’t think anything of it.

Miller: It wasn’t scary to hear that?

Hollins: No, because I knew when you’re not doing anything wrong [Laughter] there’s nothing to be worried about. So I knew that it wasn’t gonna be an issue, but heading down there, they were like, “there’s a phone call for you.” I’m like I don’t know who this is. Maybe it was a coach that didn’t want to write. He just wanted to call. And it was a representative from the governor’s office and they’re like, “hey Brett, this is …” I can’t remember her name, but, “I’m calling you because I just wanna know, do you want to go home now?” I said, “yes,” like I thought it was a joke.

Miller: Who would say “no” to this question?

Hollins: Yes, I would absolutely love to go home. “We’re sending you home in two weeks.” At that point, I still had a little bit over a year before I got to go home and it scared me. I didn’t know if this was a sick joke. When you live inside of that situation, you aren’t used to receiving incredible news like that, so it didn’t really hit me that I was going home until they actually let me out two weeks later.

Miller: For another perspective on this, we are joined by Michael Reese. He is the director of the Oregon Department of Corrections and he’s been sitting very patiently here, I think with rapt attention, as Brett has been talking. It’s good to have you back on the show.

Michael Reese: Dave, thank you very much.

Miller: Do you remember when you first heard about Brett or his story?

Reese: Well, I read it in The Oregonian, like a lot of other folks, and it was a very compelling story. As the director of the Department of Corrections, I love the hope and redemption that was reflected in the story. And then just a couple of weeks later, I get an email from Brett Hollins saying, “hey, I want to pitch an idea to you.” I said heck yes, so we met for lunch and connected, and here we are today.

Miller: How representative do you think Brett’s philosophy or approach to life in prison is? There are thousands of adults in custody who you are in charge of as the head of the DOC … ultimately in charge of. How common do you think what we’ve been hearing from Brett is?

Reese: Well, we’ve got about 12,000 adults in custody and there’s 12,000 different stories. Each person is on their own journey. What I like about Brett’s story and about his Side Door Foundation is what it talks about is that Brett’s got this bully pulpit right now. He’s got a lot of positive media attention and things going on, but he’ll be the first to tell you there’s a lot of people just like him who are incarcerated, who haven’t had this ability to tell their story. But they’re on that same journey.

Miller: For recidivism rates, we could look at the percentage of people who are released from prisons who are arrested for a crime or the percentage who are convicted of a new crime within, I think, three years. That’s sort of the common official way to tally these things. What do you pay the most attention to in terms of numbers when you’re looking and thinking about recidivism?

Reese: Yeah, I think it’s one of the key performance indicators for us as a criminal justice system. A lot goes into that. When we talk about a system, it’s not just the Department of Corrections, the police, the DA, the courts. It’s not parole and probation. It’s all of us working together to have better outcomes.

Oregon has a relatively low recidivism rate compared to other states. Sometimes it’s hard to compare apples to apples. We have a three-year window. We look at arrest, conviction and reincarceration in DOC. That last number is about 11%. If your listeners want to go to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, they do a great job dashboarding this information. You can track it, and it tells you where we’re at as a system and a lot of different performance measures.

Miller: How do you think about judging a Department of Corrections on these numbers? To me, it’s a challenging question because I think morally and legally, it makes perfect sense to hold an individual responsible if they make another terrible decision. If they hold up a bank or assault somebody, that person who made that decision. At the same time, it’s your job to oversee the system that will actually rehabilitate people who spend time in your custody. So how do you, as the head of the DOC, think about recidivism and the role that you can play to keep that number, to just plunge it down?

Reese: Yeah, that’s a great question because we’re part of a big system. And all of us play a role in those outcomes. But I will say this, that the Oregon Department of Corrections, our mission is focused on protecting Oregonians, promoting accountability and transforming lives. Ninety to 95% of the people in custody are going to come back home. They’re gonna be part of our community and we want to do everything we can to rehabilitate them, to provide them the resources they need to be successful when they’re released.

Miller: Brett, what resources do you think or programs … you’d said earlier that you took part in, what was it? GOGI?

Hollins: Yeah, Getting Out By Going In – GOGI.

Miller: And you said there were some good parts to it, but it didn’t go deep enough. So I’m curious what you think is missing right now in the programming that you are aware of in Oregon prisons.

Hollins: Yeah, and I think it’s not just Oregon prisons, it’s across the country. A lot of the programs that are out there are meant to attack specific issues like anger management. You’ve got meditation classes, you’ve got classes for parenting and you’ve got classes that provide people with accolades to go home and be successful, such as flagging, HVAC, barber. That was why I created my program when I was at Snake River as an inmate. If somebody doesn’t know what type of person they want to become, there isn’t any opportunity that you can give them where they will understand how to be successful in it.

A lot of these people are struggling with identity issues. They’re struggling with this missing sense of purpose. People with purpose don’t commit crimes, it’s just a fact. They have a reason to do what they’re doing and if these adults in custody don’t have this sense of purpose, something bigger than just themselves, they’re gonna fall back into the same routines when they get home and they’re back around in the same environment, around the same people. So I think that that is a big thing that’s missing – not helping them rediscover a sense of purpose and identity.

Miller: How do you do that? Because even as you’re describing this, it does seem like something … and this is maybe related to the conversations we’ve had over the years about substance use disorder. You can offer people all kinds of help, but something has to switch inside them before they will actually make a profound life change. And it does feel like what you’re talking about here is related to that. What can you do as a helper to push people along?

Hollins: I mean, yeah, like you said, it’s that internal switch. You’ve got to find that thing inside of them that they can hold on to. For instance, for me it was seeing the way that my mother cried when I got incarcerated. She now became my sense of purpose to become the man that I am now, because I owed that to her.

Miller: How different do you feel like the Brett that walked out of prison was and the Brett that walked in?

Hollins: I was very similar to how I am now. I was just lost. I still had the same drive. I was still a very kind human, but I had no idea what I wanted to be or who I wanted to be. So I was like a chameleon. I could blend into whatever environment that I was in in whatever circle that I was in. I could become that. And because of that lack of identity, there was no telling what type of person that I would be that day. And I got tired of being controlled externally by my surroundings. I got tired of being controlled by that. So once I decided that this is the type of man that I want to be that was forward thinking, that was here to make a positive impact wherever I go, that was when the real shift happened.

Miller: I want to ask you about choosing to go to SOU. This was in one of Bill Oram’s first articles about you – and I really recommend folks check out, I think, four total articles and a bunch of great videos. But he talked to one of the men that you stabbed, who described his life threatening injuries, two surgeries, stomach issues that he was still dealing with seven years later. And then Bill wrote that this man’s mother wrote this to Bill in a text message: “If Mr. Hollins had remorse, he would have chosen a different school to play basketball out of respect for our family.”

I’m curious what your response is – why did you choose SOU out of a number of other schools in the country that were welcoming you?

Hollins: You know, SOU was definitely the hardest decision. And I empathize with the mother, I empathize with the young man. I hope that one day they can see me for who I am now and not the anxious, confused kid that I was at 21.

With that being said, I didn’t go back there thinking about them. I went back there thinking that I wanted to leave a positive impact in an area where I had victimized others. I wanted to go back there and it wasn’t really about changing the narrative. It was more about … My mother always taught me to leave a place better than it was when you got there. I hadn’t done that before. So we had other schools, we had other opportunities that would have put me on a bigger stage that had more money to offer for scholarships, but this was bigger than that. This was about me going back to change the lives of a lot of other young, lost individuals and helping guide them so they don’t make the same mistakes that I made.

Miller: Mike Reese, what would it take to institute the kinds of programs that Brett’s talking about here that he feels are lacking, not just in Oregon prisons, as he said, but in prisons across the country. Whether it’s Brett’s own nonprofits programs that are providing it or others, what does it take to change the programming in prisons?

Reese: More staffing. So, for us to allow access to our facilities for programming like this, it requires staffing. Fundamentally, we have to have corrections officers that are there to help supervise these events. We have to have program staff that help oversee the programs. I was just talking to some of our higher education partners yesterday. Access is a challenge. We don’t have enough staff to facilitate all of the background checks, the badging and things that happen. It takes time.

So fundamentally, we need more staff. With that said, our staff are phenomenal. This work that Brett’s been doing in our facilities has taken a lot of commitment from our staff at the institutions. A lot of people are working overtime. A lot of people are showing up on their days off on their own time, giving back because they believe in what he’s doing. But that’s our team. They’re phenomenal people and they wanna create these opportunities inside our institutions.

Miller: It wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve heard from Oregonians over the years. If, essentially, you’re saying more staff, that means more money. Is it the case that Oregonians you’ve talked to, some of them say, “Yeah, but as long as these people are safe, I don’t care if their lives are better, if they have these opportunities in prison. They did terrible things and I don’t want more taxpayer money going to coddle them.” Do you hear that?

Reese: Well, fortunately I don’t hear that very often from Oregonians because I think most people understand that 90% to 95% of these folks are coming back to our communities. And they want us, the Department of Corrections, to provide the resources they need to heal, to be held accountable and to come back ready to rejoin our communities. If we warehouse people, we know that’s not going to be successful and that they’re going to recidivate. The programs that we offer, the higher education opportunities … We have vibrant relationships with UO, Portland State, the community college programs, Corban. We have the partnerships Brett mentioned, with parenting classes and things of that nature, worksource programs. This plethora of partnerships all help us provide that rehabilitative community that then leads to success when people leave our custody.

Miller: Michael Reese and Brett Hollins, thank you very much, both of you.

Reese: Thank you.

Hollins: Thank you.

Miller: Michael Reese is the director of the Oregon Department of Corrections. Brett Hollins served about four years in prison. He now is working to help people who are still behind bars to turn their lives around.

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