A sad reality. Kim Kardashian opens up about her husband Kanye West’s incarcerated cousin during the premiere of her new documentary, Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project.
In Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star, 39, travels to Chevy Chase, Maryland, to speak with advocate Marc M. Howard, who is the president of the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice and the director of Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative.
“[Kanye’s] cousin has a double life sentence for a murder that he committed when he was 17,” Kardashian says. “[His mother] is like, ‘I’m not even that distraught anymore. Like, that’s just what happens to the kids in our neighborhood. There’s just no other choice.’”
Howard tells the E! personality that he has “heard that same story so many times” with other teenagers in the U.S.
“In prisons, you have so many amazing people with gifts, with skills, with a desire to contribute to society,” he says. “Some of the smartest students that I’ve ever had are people who dropped out of school in eighth grade, and they’ve been in prison for 20 years. Intelligence and education are two different things.”
In a confessional, Kardashian tells viewers that the Oxygen film will cover stories about “prisons that offer no courses, that have no opportunities,” forcing inmates who have been released to return to society with “no education” and “no therapy” to help them succeed.
“To have Dr. Howard really fight for this, I think, is just so important,” she says. “Literally every prison should have classes like this.”
The social media mogul opened up to Us exclusively in February about how working on The Justice Project altered her perspective on life.
“I think the thing that’s changed about me most is just my empathy for people,” Kardashian said at the time. “I used to maybe be a little bit more judgmental on people’s situations, not really knowing their situations.”
Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project premieres on Oxygen Sunday, April 5, at 7 p.m. ET.
