SHARIFF INGRAM

Speakers Bureau and Policy Coordinator

pronouns: he/him

Shariff fulfills requests to share YSRP’s mission by those most affected by youth incarceration using trauma-informed, values-aligned processes, centering our client-partners in the work by giving them the opportunity to share their personal experiences with mass incarceration. In addition to facilitating requests from schools, organizations, media outlets, or anyone wanting to know about the work of YSRP, Shariff shares his personal story and that of other former juvenile lifers. Incarcerated at age 15, Shariff himself was charged and convicted in adult court, and sentenced to a mandatory life sentence without any chance for parole. He served 23 years before being released after a US Supreme Court decision (Montgomery V. Louisiana) made retroactive an earlier decision (Miller V. Alabama) that it was unconstitutional to sentence children to a mandatory life sentence without parole. 

Since his release from prison in 2020, Shariff has mentored youth through organizations like the Institute for the Development of African American Youth (IDAAY) in Philadelphia, supporting children labeled “high risk” for violence. He spent four years working full-time in construction, from highway concrete paving to bridge building, and served for two years on the Advisory Committee of the Pennsylvania Prison Society. Shariff is also a member of YSRP’s Intergenerational Healing Circle.

Through his lived experience as a child who went through the system, he advocates for policy change so that we can see a future where no kid has to go through what he and others like him had to experience!

Contact: singram@ysrp.org; 215-326-9791

Media, Publications, & Awards

Shariff’s story was mentioned in the Patrice Gaines Chapter in the book “Say Their Names: How Black Lives Came To Matter In America”.