Writer: Tracy Lee Kendall

The 30 prisoners I interviewed in the Coffield Unit in Texas have served for a variety of lengths of time; some for decades, and others…

Tracy Lee Kendall shares that Thanksgiving in prison is shaped far more by the inner lives of incarcerated people than by any holiday menu or…

Tracy Lee Kendall continues his profile of Monty Lee Johnston, a white supremacist gang leader who got out of prison and returned to volunteer at…

Iceman and Cowboy capitalized on this by envisioning the "Aryan Circle" (possibly the first white prison gang originating in Texas), formulating their bylaws and constitution,…

What do we, in here, is really think about what we’ve done to you.  Most of us are not very honest about that — with…

          April 21, 2022 is wind in the trees under a cloud-painted gray sky.  In “Flatliners,” Kiefer Sutherland would have called…

Benjamine Spencer never stopped being who he is, no matter what the world and prison threw at him.

He's a prison con artist and, for awhile, my cellmate.   The day he moved in, all seemed normal—for about five seconds—until he launched into an…

They made a journalist out of me. And that, my friends, is something of extreme significance. I came to prison with an eight grade education.…

1. Start looking at results. When prisoners are released and are successful and do not come back, see what is the same amongst them. Do…

  I learned it’s better to be as independent as possible in here to avoid any chance of becoming someone’s sex slave in prison. Everyone…

I started stealing when I was 4, from yards and shoplifting. I don’t know where I learned it, but I knew it was wrong.  I…

January 20, 2020: Listening to NPR, I hear something about a mysterious disease that alarmed China into building 2 hospitals in 5 days to handle…

Death stands in the path of all prisoners here with a chronic or terminal illness. It may step out of their way for a time,…

Here, "normal," i.e. civil, is as alien to prisoners as criminal activity is to decent people. Therefore, it is difficult to embrace change when it…

Tracy Lee Kendall writes about escaping prison mentality — a transformation that began early in his incarceration in Texas and grew into a deliberate effort…