Taylor Paul

Taylor Paul is the CEO of The League for Safer Streets, a movement to organize system-impacted individuals to be agents of change in their communities and to change the public policies that impact their communities. The League supports returning citizens to eradicate some of the social ills that they helped create, and inspires others to do the same.  

The League was born out of the VA Basketball League for Safer Streets which Taylor co-founded with Jawad Abdu and, “the commissioner,” Robert Morris. The League’s basketball program is an unorthodox and successful approach to addressing crime and gun violence, using basketball as bait to build problem solving, critical thinking and conflict resolution skills with high risk youth and young adults. Taylor is also founder of S.A.N.I.T.Y. Project (Standing Against Negative Influences Toward Youth), a program that works with incarcerated fathers and their children. Taylor was appointed by the governor of Virginia to both his Juvenile Justice and Prevention board and Department of Criminal Justice Service board, and was a community-based organizer for DCJS.

Paul Taylor served 23 years of a life plus 26 year sentence, and was paroled on his 11th try in 2017, returning to his community as Taylor Paul, the opposite of the man who went in. He’s passionate about restoring humanity back inside of people, challenging all racial biases and social injustices. Since 2020, Taylor has expanded his circle of influence as equity advisor to White Men for Racial Justice (WMRJ), a national anti-racist pro-justice community of practice, and as a member of the investment committee for the DeCarceration Fund, which invests in and supports innovative enterprises working to alleviate the suffering caused by the U.S. criminal justice system.