Patrick Harvey, speaking to the Journal from the California Medical Facility, a state prison in Stockton, falls silent for a moment, considering the question about hope. Harvey, who has served 25 years of a 25-to-life sentence, reportedly the first under California's three-strikes law handed down in Humboldt County, has a tendency to speak quickly over the phone, though it's unclear whether that's the product of his attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or the prison's phone system only allowing 20-minute calls. But asked about hope, he pauses.

"I'm what they call state-raised," he says, explaining that at 52, he's only spent 14 months as a free man since he turned 18. And even before he came to prison, he says, there were stints in juvenile halls and the California Youth Authority. He says he's been accustomed to incarceration since his early teens, since he was first sent to juvey in San Diego County after he ran away from home and was caught breaking into a vacant apartment, looking for a place to sleep.

"Once that began, I was pretty much stuck in the system," he says. "And it was my fault."

Harvey says when he started serving his current, indeterminate sentence, voters had overwhelmingly passed Proposition 184 just a few years earlier, making three strikes the law of the land. Pete Wilson was governor and, Harvey recalls, almost nobody was getting paroled as California's prison population continued to spike toward its 2006 peak of almost 175,000 inmates. Hope was some kind of hypothetical luxury he says he couldn't afford, the kind that does more harm than good.

"I'd kind of come to terms that I'm just going to do life in prison," he says. "I used to watch lifers come onto the yard and I'd just look at the way different people carried that dynamic. There were people who had this kind of non-realistic hope of getting out."

He says he saw inmates whose emotions were ruled by the status of their latest appeal or changes in the law, dragging their families through cycles of hope and despair. It got the best of some people, he says, leading some to suicide and others to do "dumb stuff" like start fights.

"I always used to tell myself not to get caught up believing in a false future, not to get my family caught up in that," Harvey says. "I'd see people like that and remind myself not to get that way."

But more than two decades later, both the law and Harvey have changed. Hope has now become tangible, constant, unavoidable.

As someone having served the bulk of a long prison sentence for a nonviolent offense, Harvey has been identified as a candidate for a new prosecutor-led resentencing pilot program. He says the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office is currently reviewing his case to determine whether it will ask a judge to reduce his sentence. It's unclear how long that process will take or when a decision may come.

Friends and family say the new program is being implemented at an opportune time for Harvey, since they've noticed a marked change in him in recent years as he's dedicated himself to self-awareness and self-improvement, to preparing for a day when he might leave state custody.

Harvey himself concedes he's hopeful but says he's trying to focus on what's in front of him, what he can control, and not getting too caught up in what might be.

"I live in what's known as living in amends," Harvey says, explaining he now tries to help those around him whenever possible, whether helping a cellmate prepare for a parole hearing or a fellow inmate who uses a wheelchair get around. "I do that in showing that I owe society something, that I owe society what I took from it. In living in amends, you atone for the damage you've done. And you do it daily."

Looking through Harvey's history with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, he's transferred prisons 24 times, rarely staying in one place for more than a year. His childhood followed a similar pattern.

Thomas Harvey says he and his wife Judy were searching when they had Patrick, the first of their five children. In 1971, they were traveling to different alternative living communities and trying to find a life that fit.

"We were hippies," he says, explaining that they lived in a cabin in the Nevada desert before moving to a commune in San Francisco, then traveling to British Columbia to start a commune there before settling on a small plot of land on the Kenai Peninsula of rural Alaska to build a cabin. "All that was in the first year of his life. We didn't know but that had to affect him."

In Alaska, Thomas Harvey says he set about building the small family cabin, noting it was a significant undertaking as he had no real homebuilding experience. Since he "didn't believe in using any kind of machines," he used only an ax and hand saw at first. When it came to raising Patrick, Thomas Harvey says he and his wife followed an unconventional parenting philosophy out of Europe.

"The idea was to really let your child experience who they are, take out all barriers and let them see the world and experience it," Thomas Harvey says. "We would leave the cabin door open. In the first few months and years of his life, he was brought up with no boundaries."

That would change abruptly, though, after Thomas Harvey had a spiritual awakening and found Jesus. Thomas Harvey says the shift started when, with winter approaching, he flagged down the train into town to go buy a chainsaw, realizing his cabin effort needed mechanical reinforcements, as well as weatherproofing materials. In town, he says he stayed at the local rescue mission, which required he attend service to get a cot and a meal.

Thomas Harvey says he'd always been spiritual, raised Episcopalian and having followed "different gurus" in adulthood, and concedes he was likely high on "marijuana and probably LSD or mescalin," which he would take in small doses, when he attended the service. When the preacher talked about finding Jesus and being born again that day, Thomas Harvey says it spoke to him, sparking a life-long conversion.

"That held for me, even though I was on drugs," he says.

Within a few years, the family had relocated from the cabin in the woods to a commune started in the city of Palmer by Gospel Outreach, a Christian church founded in Humboldt County in 1971 by pastor Jim Durkin that found a foothold speaking to young people who had embraced the counter culture. From there, they moved a Christina commune in Anchorage, where they stayed for two years, before settling in Kenai.

In a "journey letter" Patrick Harvey wrote at the request of For the People, a nonprofit helping to administer the state's prosecutor-led recall and resentencing program, he talks about the abrupt shift from growing up with "no neighbors and few rules" to living in a Christian community that embraced the motto "spare the rod, spoil the child," and empowered all its members to set children straight if they felt they were out of line. Patrick Harvey say he was punished frequently and severely. "I believe I developed to think that if everything, no matter how trivial, resulted in getting beat, then why try to be good," he wrote.

Shortly after moving to Kenai, when he was maybe 5 or 6, Patrick Harvey says was also molested by a teenage neighbor.

"He told me he had puppies to give away in an abandoned trailer on their property," he wrote, adding that once inside, the boy trapped him and molested him, adding it would soon become a regular occurrence.

In the small community, Patrick Harvey came to be known as a kind of problem child. He'd sneak out of his house at a night and was regularly caught stealing.

"He was just always in trouble," Thomas Harvey says.

In 1982, the family, now with five kids, decided it was time to move on. Thomas Harvey says he had his own business in town, was serving as an assemblymember in the local bureau government and it all became too much. So he took the $7,000 in permanent funds the family received as Alaska residents, purchased an old U.S. Army ambulance and refurbished it into an RV.

"I couldn't carry the weight of it all, and so we took off in a bus and toured the country," he says. "Looking back on it, I didn't make good decisions a lot of the time."

The Harveys traveled to the East Coast and down through the South, home schooling their kids, once stranded in Nashville, Tennessee, for months after they broke down there, before landing in Southern California.

"We were a dysfunctional family living in this cooped-up RV traveling to towns where we didn't know anyone," recalls Matthew Harvey, one of Patrick's younger brothers, speculating that Patrick, as the oldest, probably found the period the most challenging.

When Patrick was about 11, the family landed in San Diego County. They stayed for a time but remained homeless and would move from "spot to spot" in the RV, he says.

"We never grew roots," Patrick Harvey wrote in the journey letter. "I never developed friends, as we were never in any particular place for very long."

Patrick Harvey says he continued to steal throughout this time. Sometimes he took things he wanted or that made him feel like he fit in at school, like clothes or a skateboard. Other times it was food. He says the only times he got caught were with food, so he stayed out of major trouble.

When he was about 12, Patrick Harvey says he was molested again, this time by an uncle, who he says worked to turn him against his parents while grooming him and molesting him almost daily over the course about six months.

"He told me I was gay and my Christian parents didn't want a 'faggot' for a son, but he offered conditional love, if I did what he wanted," Patrick Harvey recalled in the letter, later adding that the grooming was so effective he still sometimes feels like a "liar" when talking about it and that despite "lots of therapy" over the years all his five senses "relive what happened when I go back there in my mind."

Thomas Harvey says his son changed after the molestation, "like turning a coin over." Long disobedient and drawn to trouble, Thomas Harvey says his son became angry.

"He just changed and he kind of went wild," he says.

Patrick Harvey says his first arrest came around this time, after he ran away from home and broke into a vacant apartment looking for a place to stay. A series of stays in juvenile hall would follow, as well as one at Charter Hospital, a psychiatric facility where Patrick Harvey says he was strapped in five-point restraints and forcibly medicated.

Around the same time, Patrick Harvey says he smoked cannabis for the first time and it made him feel "better, happy, safe." A short time later, he tried speed, which he says made him feel "powerful, funny, energetic ... accepted and normal." None were feelings he'd been accustomed to.

"I always wanted to be high," he says. "Drugs were my friend, and later my captor."

When Patrick Harvey was released from San Quentin State Prison on parole on March 20, 1997, he says he was determined to get his life in order. And things started off well. He enrolled at College of the Redwoods and found work with New Life Services Co., painting and cleaning houses after disasters, and moved into a duplex with Karie Carsner.

Carsner says she and Patrick were at El Molino High School in Forestville in western Sonoma County in the late 1980s when they met on a movie double date. Carsner's date had brought him along to go out with her friend. "By the time the movie was over, we totally knew we were with the wrong people," Carsner says, adding that she was instantly drawn to Patrick — his sense of humor, his varied taste in music, his smell — and the two have shared a deep connection ever since.

Carsner says in retrospect she believes the two recognized childhood trauma in each other, though she says they never discussed it at the time. But they loved adventuring together, going to the beach and on hikes, and sneaking off campus to get lunch at a nearby fast food restaurant. One day, she says, they got the idea to catch a Greyhound up to Eureka to steal Patrick Harvey's mom's car and drive it south to revisit someplace they'd both been as kids. The first part of the plan went off without a hitch, she says, but then they woke up in Judy Harvey's car, surrounded by police with guns drawn.

After spending about a week in juvenile hall because she refused to disclose who her parents were, Carsner says she was sentenced to paint the fence outside the police department. The next time she saw Patrick, some years later, she says he was "really addicted" to methamphetamine.

Patrick Harvey says that kicked off a years-long cycle in which he was either in prison — serving two stints from 1990 to 1993 and from 1994 to 1997 — or taking methamphetamine and stealing things.

"That's my cycle," he says. "I do a lot of meth and then I do crimes."

He says he's recently come to understand what fuels this pattern. First, there's the draw to the feeling of power and strength methamphetamine gives him, then the quick spiral into addiction and then the burglaries, which funded his addiction, but also gave him a sense of control and competence. It was the feeling of being good at something that had evaded him in many other aspects of life.

When he moved in with Carsner, he says he knew he was running out of chances with two strikes on his record. By that point, he had convictions for three burglaries, two car thefts, fleeing the county and a charge of attempted reckless evasion.

Carsner says things were going well for a time. Patrick was working and going to school, she says, and acting as "a really good dad" to her daughter, who was entering kindergarten at the time. She says it was Patrick who researched schools and helped find one that was a match for her — an art school in Arcata — and would then take her there every morning.

Then one Sunday in November, she says everything changed. They'd spent the day with Patrick's family at the beach in Trinidad and were heading home as it was getting dark. When crossing the Mad River bridge on U.S. Highway 101 south, they were hit from behind by a big pickup truck with such force, Patrick Harvey says, that the crumple zone at the rear of their car came within inches of Carsner's daughter in the back seat. The other driver was drunk, Patrick Harvey says, and stumbled out of his truck to ask Patrick why he'd been "going backward on the freeway."

Patrick Harvey, Carsner and her daughter were all taken to the hospital and Carsner says she suffered a crushed disk in her neck and a head injury that left her with memory issues that forced her to drop out of school. Patrick, she says, quickly spiraled.

"He just couldn't deal with life," she says. "He was just ... gone. It went really fast."

Asked about the crash, Patrick Harvey says its aftermath is a low point in his life. In retrospect, he says he just didn't have any coping skills and that as soon as he started feeling "bad and desperate," he started going out and getting high on meth and quickly fell back into his old pattern. But he also says things may not have been going so well as others may have perceived, even before the crash.

"I wouldn't want it to be misconstrued that I was doing perfect before then," he says, adding that he'd already slipped into the pattern of being "a casual drug user," saying he'd started feeling "uncomfortable, awkward and out of place" as his new life had solidified. "I was using speed. I want to keep it honest. I was probably using more than she was aware of because I was keeping it secret from her because I was ashamed of myself."

It was only a few weeks from the day of the crash to Patrick Harvey's last arrest. At some point in that timeframe, Carsner confronted him, telling him he was on the path to a third strike and a long prison sentence. But he says he didn't listen.

"The message was there but to me at the time, it was something she was saying to take me down," Patrick Harvey says. "I was just being my worst self and I didn't know how to stop. ... I totally failed there. And the result was my promise of a life with her, I basically flushed that down the toilet."

Carsner recalls talking to Patrick after he'd been sentenced to 25 years to life in prison and put on a level-IV yard at High Desert State Prison in Susanville with murderers, rapists and gang members. She remembers being so mad at him and so sorry for him.

"I told him, 'I'm mad at you. You're an idiot and I'm not going to be your cheerleader," she says. "But it was obvious that he was scared. He was really scared. He was a kid who never got to be a kid, never got the help he needed. He was never not a good person. If there was someone stuck on the side of the road, he'd stop to help them. He was covered in tattoos but would do things for little kids. But he would do drugs, then do stupid things."

Over the phone, Patrick Harvey says this piece of his life is perhaps the hardest to talk about, noting that while he hasn't "unremembered" it, he has "a tendency not to think about it." But now 52, he says he's also come to see it as necessary.

"Prison saved my life," he says. "It did do that. I would be dead for sure. I had no plans to stop using drugs. I wanted to do more drugs."

"This is Global Tel Link. You have a pre-paid call from Patrick Harvey, an incarcerated individual at Pelican Bay State Prison, in Crescent City, California," begins the automated message from the prison phone system, warning that calls will be monitored. When the Journal accepts the call, Patrick Harvey says he's adapting to his new surroundings since being transferred from the medical facility in Stockton. He's been to Pelican Bay before, but that was on the maximum security yard, not the level-II yard he's placed on now. He says he was sad to leave the medical facility, saying he'd gotten comfortable there and liked helping other inmates who were there dealing with various medical issues.

"But it's a good thing," he says, explaining that his transfer opened up the medical bed he no longer requires to someone in need of treatment.

Over the ensuing weeks, Harvey conveys that he's getting his feet under him in his new surroundings, though his personal property has not yet arrived. He says he's already landed a prison job, teaching a crew of about 14 inmates to paint murals. He says he was approached by the yard captain, who'd learned of the handful of murals Patrick painted while at the facility in the early 2000s.

"That's a privilege," he says, saying he's excited to share his passion for art with others and give the place some color.

Patrick Harvey says when he was last in Pelican Bay State Prison, he was simply trying to get by day to day, looking to paint and be creative where he could, but with no real designs on growth or the potential for a next chapter in his life. He was simply a lifer doing life.

"Because I was facing a bunch of time, they put me on the yard at one of the hardest prisons in the country," Patrick Harvey says of his first placement in Susanville, which he says was run by the Aryan Brotherhood and where he says he was involved in a pair of riots, which prompted his first transfer to Pelican Bay. In addition to a pervasive hopelessness, he says he struggled to navigate prison life initially but felt he was "growing up a little bit" when he reached a pivot point where he defied the direction of a prison gang.

"They told me they wanted me to do something violent to carry my share," he says. "My term came up, basically, but I made the decision to not be violent. A faction of skinheads put me on a hit list for basically not doing the violent stuff I was supposed to."

Patrick Harvey says he was then placed on what's known as a Sensitive Needs Yard in the prison, a form of protective custody. There, he says, the vibe was different and he was surrounded for the first time with people accessing self-help programming and trying to better themselves. At first, he says, learning about victimology and substance use disorder and the like was just "something to do." But over time, it began to resonate.

"It's a different get down over here," he says. "Basically, there was an option to change your life."

He says he started to pour himself into the work, earning a GED in 2014, and certificates for courses in alternatives to violence, fatherhood and focus, victim impact, substance abuse, Narcotics Anonymous and safe food handling, ultimately becoming a facilitator in alternatives to violence groups. He says he also started to stay out of trouble, noting that his last significant rules violation was for a fight "eight to 10" years ago.

The last thing he got in serious trouble for, Patrick Harvey says, was having tattoo paraphernalia, noting that he became a kind of "professional" at prison tattooing to make a bit of money here and there to purchase things through the canteen. (Matthew Harvey says he was amazed that Patrick rigged a makeshift tattoo gun out of a mechanical pencil, a guitar string, a Walkman motor, a multi-volt plug-in adapter and homemade ink.) Patrick Harvey says he's now given up tattooing for the time being, instead drawing pictures for fellow inmates. He says he's currently working on an illustration of a guy's daughter reading stories to her pet dragon as a gift.

Patrick Harvey says the first real prospect of release came in early 2020, when he was informed he'd go before the Board of Parole Hearings that August. He says he quickly worked to prepare but wasn't ready on multiple levels, saying in the stress of it all he snapped at two prison staffers in separate incidents shortly before the hearing, calling one a "bitch."

"It got to that point, unfortunately, and it was totally my fault," he says, adding that he later apologized but feels the incidents worked against his chances.

But that aside, he says he wasn't ready, and the board found he lacked insight and continued to pose a moderate risk for violence, denying his parole. The Humboldt County District Attorney's Office argued against his release at the time, pointing to his "early criminality," the years of substance abuse and his "psychological instability," evidenced by a history of rules violations in prison.

Patrick Harvey says he understands why he was denied, saying he feels he did lack some insight into what caused his previous relapses into drug use and criminality. But it was the first time he'd allowed himself — and his family — to hope, he says. And it didn't work out.

"That was a real, real hard thing," he says, adding that after getting over the initial sting, he got back to work on himself.

Patrick Harvey says he sees things differently now. Leaving prison, he says, is no longer the sole goal, just another step on a path of self-improvement toward, hopefully, making positive contributions to his community. With that mindset, he says he started focusing on doing everything possible to help those around him, hoping to make up for what he's done by what he's doing, bit by bit, day by day. He and a friend in prison agreed to "sponsor" one another, pledging to get together once a day just to talk, to "sound off each other and give constructive criticism and support."

"It's a checkpoint," he says. "Knowing at some point in the next 24 hours you're going to have to explain to someone how you're doing, it keeps you on track."

And he says he started to think seriously about what life outside might look like and what he'd need to be successful, putting together a relapse prevention plan and researching residential programs that could help his transition. Amid this backdrop, Patrick Harvey says he was helping his cellmate prepare for his parole board hearing one day in June when a letter arrived, looking "official" and "all typed up." Initially, he says he thought it was just from "some attorney" trying to fish for extra work. But when he read it closely, he saw it was from the nonprofit For the People, saying he'd been identified as a potential candidate for the prosecutor led resentencing program being piloted in nine California counties, including Humboldt, which it is helping to administer.

Patrick Harvey says that this felt inherently different than being called before the parole board, as it feels like a chance to make his case to the district attorney — an elected representative of his community — that he's ready to come home, that he's changed.

Both Humboldt County District Attorney Stacey Eads and For the People declined to comment for this story. For the people said it's policy is "not to publicly comment on active, ongoing cases." Eads said while her office does have one individual under review currently, "evaluating a potential candidate for resentencing is a thorough, multi-step process, which, for an outcome that is fair and just, requires seeking and considering victim input, as well as respecting the confidentiality considerations for an identified potential candidate." The Humboldt County Public Defender's Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked, as the Journal's publication day drew close, if he's concerned that talking to the press for a story could harm his chances, could somehow be held against him in the review process, Patrick Harvey concedes he is but says he thinks the story is important. He says he wants people to get some insight into the lives affected by these programs beyond names and rap sheets on a page. And he says he wants his community and his district attorney to hear from him directly, wants to tell them that he's committed to living in amends.

"I wish Eads could have been in the room for all our conversations," he says. "It feels empowering that I have a voice. In here a lot of times, you get a feeling that you disappear to society, not in a pity way, but you just feel a little voiceless. And a lot of times, I feel if people knew more, they might feel a little bit differently.

"It is my community," he continues. "I'm not separate from my community. I'm part of it, in exile."

Patrick Harvey says he'd been up for three days doing methamphetamine when, on the morning of Dec. 2, 1997, he left the home of an acquaintance — "a fellow drug user and criminal" — looking to find a home to burglarize in search of computer chords to hook up a stolen scanner. He canvassed several neighborhoods looking for a house obstructed from view by neighbors and that seemed to be empty. A place on Papke Court in Eureka seemed to fit the bill so he knocked on the front door in the late morning, checking if anyone was home. When no one answered, he looked for a way in, finding an unlocked side door.

He'd been inside for hours when Peggy O'Neill, at work in Trinidad, got the worried call from her 15-year-old daughter, who'd arrived home from school to find the whole house "just taken apart." More than 20 years later, O'Neill recounts the experience in vivid detail after being called by the Journal out of the blue.

"Something is wrong with our house," O'Neill recalls her daughter reporting. "She said, 'Everything is all turned upside down.' I said, 'Get out of there now.'"

O'Neill says her daughter instead barricaded herself in the bathroom after seeing Patrick Harvey piling up the family's belongings outside, but O'Neill didn't know this at the time, as she'd told a co-worker to dial 911 before jumping in her car to speed home. She says she'd been going 100 mph on U.S. Highway 101 for miles when she noticed a California Highway Patrol car behind her with its lights on near Mad River.

"I pulled over and was literally out of my car and at his window before he knew what was happening," she says, adding the officer radioed dispatch and learned O'Neill's daughter was OK and Patrick Harvey was in custody.

When O'Neill got home, she says the place was trashed.

"Everything you could think of was upside down," she says, adding that Patrick Harvey had made a sandwich in her kitchen, drank a couple of sodas and evidently took his time ransacking the house. "All the drawers were pulled out; everything was pulled out of the closet."

O'Neill says the burglary left her deeply shaken, noting it came just days after the disappearance of Karen Mitchell and around the time she'd heard a girl had been raped by Zane Junior High School.

"It was pretty terrifying," she says. While it wasn't a violent crime, she notes, it could have been, as Patrick Harvey, who'd been unarmed when entering the home, had taken her husband's pistol during the burglary. The idea of what might have happened had her daughter caught him by surprise haunted her. "I was just really traumatized."

Months later, after a jury trial at which prosecutors cast him as a career criminal, Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Dale Reinholtsen sentenced Patrick Harvey to serve 25 years to life in prison, reportedly making him the first local defendant sentenced under California's three strikes law, after his conviction for first-degree burglary, being a felon in possession of a firearm and other offenses. Reached by the Journal for this story, Reinholtsen says he doesn't recall the specifics of the case but he imagines it was a difficult sentencing decision, with the seriousness of Harvey's crimes and the fact he was armed weighed against his relatively young age and the length of potential imprisonment. While he declines to weigh in on whether Patrick Harvey should be recalled and resentenced, he said he's glad the law has changed and such programs and opportunities exist, allowing people to take a fresh look at old cases.

Informed of Patrick Harvey's candidacy for the recall and resentencing program, O'Neill notes that he wrote her a letter a few years back, when he was coming up for parole. He tells the Journal he did this because he wasn't sure she was going to be notified, as the victim of a property rather than violent crime, and felt she had the right to know. O'Neill says that while she appreciated some of the sentiments in the letter, she found it off-putting he'd found her home address.

"In my opinion, 25 years in prison is a long time," O'Neill says after considering a moment. "I don't know what kind of person he is now. Maybe he is totally changed. He may have changed and I'm not here to say he doesn't deserve another chance. ... I wouldn't stand in his way of getting released."

For a long time, Patrick Harvey says he never thought about the victims of his crimes, never considered the way his actions impacted their lives. But he says he now can't think about his past without thinking about the reverberating impacts: the way O'Neill probably struggled to feel safe and clean in her own home for years if not decades; the fear her daughter must have felt; the officers who had to chase and tackle him, likely fearing for their own safety; the jurors who sat through the trial at which he lied and insisted it wasn't him; the feelings of shame and anger his family and friends must have felt after believing his denials. And he says he's intent on making amends.

He says he's made contact with the Delancey Street Foundation, a nonprofit residential re-entry and substance abuse treatment program based in San Francisco, saying that while he feels he's ready to leave prison, he knows he'll need help adjusting to life outside. This, he says, makes release feel a bit less daunting, saying "I needed to make a deal with myself: I'm not getting out of prison, I'm just reducing my custody." He also says he's lined up supports and sponsors, and his parents and siblings are standing by to help in any way they can.

But Harvey says whatever happens, he's in a good place. He's been completely sober since early 2018, he says, when he last smoked cannabis. His relationship with his parents, who he talks to daily, is as solid as it's ever been, he says, saying "they've forgiven me and I've forgiven them, and we've come a long way." He says he worries about the impact this new hope may have on them if things don't work out, but says he's impressed upon them that, "We're hoping this goes a certain way but if [the DA] says no, it's still OK."

For her part, Judy Harvey says she's noticed a deep change in her son and thinks he deserves another chance, as do all non-violent offenders sentenced under three strikes.

"There have been murderers in this town — and I know who they are, I know their names — who have been let out," she says. "It makes me angry. It's like, 'Wait a minute. My son stole things.' I feel it's unjust."

She says her son has been deeply missed by his entire family, his incarceration leaving a void at birthday parties and holidays. She also says there will be a line of people waiting to "hold his feet to the fire" and help keep him in line if they get the chance.

Carsner says she, too, feels she's noticed a change in her phone calls with Patrick, saying he's repeatedly tried to stress his regret at what he put her through and the work he's been putting in to better himself. She says she's hopeful.

Thomas Harvey agrees his son has been on a good road, doing good work and is in a good place, saying he believes "God has been preparing him for this."

He's asked whether he believes his son has been rehabilitated.

"I believe he needs a chance," Thomas Harvey says. "How do you know when someone's been in prison for so long? They get dirty. It's not a good place."

He pauses, then continues. His son has been working hard, he says, and he believes the new insight and self-awareness are real. But rehabilitation isn't so much a destination as a process. He points to Delancey Street or another residential program, saying that while he initially pushed back at the idea, wanting Patrick Harvey home after his release, he now sees it as an important step on his rehabilitative path.

Thomas Harvey recalls an interaction at a recent prayer group at his church in which a woman asked if he knows he's going to heaven. He says he replied, "No," saying he hopes to, but can't speak to what will happen when the day comes. Rehabilitation is similar, he says.

"It's like salvation," he says. "You hope for it but do you know? Not until the day."

Editor's note: This story has been updated from a previous version to correct the location of the California Healthcare Facility. The Journal regrets the error.

Thadeus Greenson (he/him) is the Journal's news editor. Reach him at (707) 442-1400, extension 321, or [email protected].