Trans in Prison: Waiting for Gender Affirmation Surgery
Jinx explains the pain, isolation, and lack of support she experiences as a trans person in prison while awaiting gender affirmation surgery. Two years. In…
Jinx explains the pain, isolation, and lack of support she experiences as a trans person in prison while awaiting gender affirmation surgery. Two years. In…
Jerry Metcalf recounts the terrifying moments of a deadly fire in prison, when guards fled through choking smoke and locked inmates were left to suffocate—until…
Jeremy Busby writes about a friend on death row whose influence transformed his life in prison and whose legacy continues long after his execution by…
Marcellus Smith writes about how child incarceration shaped his life long before he ever stepped into an adult prison. A Childhood Behind Locked Doors Growing…
When it comes to the prison economics of prison, you have to live inside here to understand it. For example, inmates use “postage stamps” as…
Charles Smith and Amanda Coles reflect on their prison relationship — and how it reshapes love, trust, and identity for both the incarcerated partner and…
In the ghetto, there’s lots of improvisation. As young boys, we were very active and had loads of energy. We liked to play…
So you’re looking for love? You’re one of those who has yet to find that person to walk your journey with. You’ve decided to widen…
Edgar Garcia writes about 17 years on death row, the clemency that granted him a second chance at life, and the struggle to escape the…
This is the story of my escape from prison in 2010. What you're about to read is 100% true and you can look it up…
Charles Norman writes about prison gangs in Florida in a way only someone who has been in prison for more than FOUR decades could. Two…
How can our young African American men identify with society’s mainstream values when they cannot even identify themselves? I speak from lived experience. But first,…
Two packs of cookies and a Pepsi costs $2.50. The homie across the tier might let you get that for a Colgate and a deodorant,…
After a tragic car accident during a police chase left an innocent man dead and led to my 50-year prison sentence for felony murder, I…
I may know how Ethan Crumbley's life in prison is going to look better than anyone, anywhere. Almost two decades ago, in very different circumstances,…
In prison, it’s not necessary for you to be a racist in order for you to act like one, to live within the confines of…
The situation, simply put: for families of the incarcerated, life is brutal. Sad. Devastating to family structure and closeness. Difficult financially. Painful. Wrenching, forcing families…
Like many other communities, prison is largely self-segregated. Considering the psychodynamics within, this is not unexpected. One of the biggest surprises of prison life, however,…
Joseph Dole writes about why parole reform for violent offenders is essential to reducing mass incarceration while maintaining public safety. The Purpose of Parole The…
He tells her to leave when the D.A. offers fifteen years as the plea bargain. They're on a visit, at Riker's Island. You can’t take…
Psycho. Fresh, Peace Maker, Lee 3, G-Town, Turtle, and C-Murda are just a few of the prison nicknames some of the prisoners on my cellblock…
Due to the media’s distortion of prison life and the people incarcerated there, most of society envisions Illinois “max joints” to be a milieu of…
A ABORIGINE: (n) [sometimes derog.] A Native American. AGENT: (n) A snitch, usually on a specific mission from staff. [“Look out talking about the mota,…
I’d never heard of Alexis Patterson until I had a conversation with an inmate over the summer (2021) about her. I’ve since learned, through friends…
The hole, the new term for solitary confinement. It’s the place they take you when you break one of their “rules,” or at least they…
Prison can be a scary place. Even scarier can be the IDEA of prison for someone who is facing it, especially if that someone has…
Prison used to be rougher, whew, a place you dreaded to go, a place that inspired fear and anxiety, a place possessed with dark brutality,…
I’m a repeat offender. This is my 4th time in penitentiary. I’m the “poster child” for getting out of prison. First time I was 17…
Well, after 20 years in solitary confinement in America's toughest federal Super-max prison, still half-sleep and dazed, my mind and heart raced, baffled and excited.…
Troy David offers some advice for pursuing rehabilitation in prison — tips that will prepare you for reentry. He says these are the rules he…
Recently I had a four-and-a-half-day mini-vacation (my first in 15 years) when I was admitted to Grace Hospital in Morganton, North Carolina. Apparently, while doing…
As a hardcore criminal, it was only a matter of time before I went to prison. What every detective knows, and most criminals don’t, is…
Thomas Koskovich takes a look back at the evolution of his criminal life to better understand how he ended up in prison with two life…
Gordon Grilz explores the complexities of being a murderer , including crimes of passion, the morality of the sixth commandment, and the gray areas of…
Let me be the first to say that I have been around some men who should never get out of prison. They should never see…
In the 1978 movie Midnight Express, American hashish smuggler Billy Hayes serves a few years in a Turkish prison. Then he gets resentenced to life…
It’s the last week of November, the middle of the night. Moonless. Cold. And outside the sky is a darkened clutter of dank, drippy clouds.…
Prison is restrictive, and many items common in the free world are not allowed. But prisoners are an inventive bunch of outlaws without respect for…
Four hours away from execution on death row. From December 17, 2003, to February 9, 2004, the prison guards and administration at this modern-day plantation…
I’ve decided to stay sober. Such decisions seem to be magnets that attract all sorts of intoxicants, so my sobriety could die before the sun…
Since 1989, 3,000 people who were wrongly convicted have been exonerated. In roughly 69% of those exonerations, there was testimony provided by witnesses that proved…
[Update! As of 8/16, the prison is still in lockdown and the warden and others have been fired.] I’m writing this today because many people…
Earlier this year (i.e. 2023) Texas finally got around to fully incorporating the prison tablets into its prisons. I have been reading about e-tablets being…
I was captain of the football team. I broke many track and field records. I got good grades in school and even got a scholarship…
My name is Stacey and I’m a transgender woman living in a men’s prison. I wanted to share some of the heartaches and triumphs I’ve…
Childhood trauma is the invisible thread running through the lives of most people in prison, shaping their paths long before they ever committed a crime.…
When I entered prison, I did not imagine being here seven years later, or still alive. People talk about how it feels to hit rock…
In the past ten years more than ten people on Texas Death Row have been found to be wrongly convicted and incarcerated, over 150 nationwide.…
Drugs are so ubiquitous and readily available you start to wonder how many guards are on the take and how high it goes up in…
On Monday, January 9, 2023, I reported to the classification building for my annual progress report. They verify your current emergency contact information in case…
2021 is my year for being released from prison and I'm scared, nervous and concerned. I try to keep this positive mindset that it'll all…
When I was a kid, I always felt different. I never felt like I belonged. I didn’t feel like I completely connected with other boys,…
Most of us will get out. Something like 95% of prisoners get out, eventually. Some will stay in prison for only a few months; others will…
There are many things in life you can’t understand until you’ve lived through them to experience the feelings associated with those moments. With this in…
From Merle Haggard and Ozzy Osbourne, Meek Mill and T.I. (all former prisoners) to radios and music-artists inside today, music sets a tone like the musical…
I am once again faced with the abusive conditions in which Ad-Seg [Administrative Segregation, a form of solitary] has a legacy. It’s a place where…
My original appellate attorney did not raise my judge's use of acquitted conduct at sentencing as a due-process violation. But in 2006 I hired James…
I’m 31 and came to prison at 15, so I’ve been here for half my life and my dad has visited me more during the…
I was never on “death row.” Instead of being sentenced to death by execution, I was sentenced to death by incarceration or Life-Without-Parole (LWOP),…
As a young boy in adult prison, my first visitor in prison was my dad. Looking back at the picture I have from that day,…
Sergeant McKay* was passing out the food trays, sliding the trays through the slot in our metal doors. Every convict on the confinement tier knew…
Convicts like drugs. A lot. These are their stories… the stories of the most popular drugs in prison. Between 80-90% have some form of substance-abuse…
After two years of putting up with the rednecks as a permanent worker at the North Florida Reception Center in Lake Butler, I was guaranteed…
“Looking Back” is the name of my Native American comrade I met when I first arrived at North Dakota state penitentiary a few months ago.…
AN AMAZING SIDE NOTE about Leonard Scovens: Agnes Fury is the mother and grandmother of author Leonard Scoven’s two victims. Years ago, she contacted Scovens…
I turned forty recently. (Please hold the applause.) Never in a billion years would I have ever envisioned that I would hit the big 4-0…
One day the neighbors heard screams coming from our house and called the authorities. When the police came, they found four grossly abused kids. A…
In Texas Prisons, guards are notorious for beating, killing, and harassing prisoners. They also set up prisoners to be attacked by other prisoners while handcuffed…
There's a prison underground economy. Capitalism is mimicked. There’s upper-class, middle-class and lower-class. Yes. There are prisoners with and there are prisoners without.
When the guys upstairs on Row Two and Three flush their waste, it leaks into the pipe chase, oozing into my cell from beneath the…
For the past two decades, up until April 27, 2015, I was living in solitary confinement at the only federal Supermax prison in America, ADX…
To torture a person is to cause intense suffering to punish or coerce by inflicting severe pain or anguish to the mind or body. I…
I always wanted a boob job. In all my years as a stripper, drug addict and a prostitute, my first big dream was to have…
These 3 ranking officers emptied 2 small cans of chemical agents and used 4 big cans emptying at least 2 of them – all within…
Our doctors look like Doogie Howser and approach patients like a short order cook does breakfast. It’s easy to believe we’re part of some unknown…
I realize this is obvious as hell, but here’s the data. Data confirms that police treat Black Americans with less respect. A Stanford University analysis…
The internet is awash with anecdotes (many of them horror stories) of the pitfalls and ups and downs of being in an MWI (Met While…
Like many others who find themselves locked in a cage with no way out, he too had a breaking point. The day we met, he…
As miserable as prison is, it can also be pretty entertaining at times. I remember one day when two women were about to “throw down.”…
Sometimes, after my roommate has gone to sleep (or has left the room, or when no one is looking), I grab my pillow and hold…
Murph the Surf and I are walking in the rain past the steam plant heading back to the Southwest Unit. The chapel is off…
The man’s kissing a skunk…in a photograph, that landed him in the hole for ninety days. The photo was used as evidence to convict him…
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