I've always turned to literature as my means of escape, especially in the midst of painful situations and despair. So, it's only fitting that I would relate most with Virginia Woolf the night I'd find my bunky lying dead on a [...]
Brutal Murders. Victims Stabbed 83 Times. Those were just some of the headlines above stories filled with truth and lies. Stories about a sociopathic monster. Surely a villain made for novels and movies. Those were the only places I [...]
Courtesy: Charles Norman Prisoners beaten to death by guards. A prisoner boiled alive until he died. A murder contract taken out against a released inmate by racist Ku Klux Klan (KKK) prison guards. Systemic brutality, widespread contraband smuggling, false statements, [...]
BY MUSTAFA ZULU "Pack your panties ladies!" I remember the prison guard yelling, while banging on the cell bars with his baton. "I've got two tickets to hell with your guys’ names on them." "Get your fat, greasy, low-life ass on [...]
Courtesy of Jason Walker While this Texas prison, Clements Unit, has well over one-thousand documented mentally ill prisoners, its not considered a psych unit at all. In fact it has one small ward that has a program for [...]
I spent the first few years of my natural life sentence muttering incoherently to myself and chewing my fingernails to bleeding nubs while I contemplated the most painless methods of suicide for American prisoners. How’s a 23-year old kid supposed to [...]
Sixteen years later, that day still played in my head as clear as a Blu-ray movie. I still saw Frank's raised eyebrows when, in broad daylight, he announced, "We're taking that." A nine-millimeter semi-automatic stuck out of his jeans pocket. I [...]
When I sat on death row for 20 years my favorite game to play was the “what if…?” This is an exercise that most people engage in, but none more so than prisoners. No inmate feels like they belong in prison. [...]
One thing I’ve learned about myself is that there is no situation that is so bad that I can’t make it worse. The last time this thought popped into my head was seven months earlier, looking into the mirror at an [...]
Courtesy of Brad Simpson "Now Entering the Jungle" By Brad “Lou” Simpson I have only had a few overwhelming experiences in my life. Looking back, I can count them all on one hand. The first time, I was young [...]
Courtesy of Paul Brown In the ghetto, there’s lots of improvisation. As young boys, we were very active and had loads of energy. We liked to play baseball, but lacked the equipment. No problem. For a bat, we used [...]
BY SIDNEY P. MARTIN It was a hot June afternoon at Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Lawrenceville, Virginia. Everybody was going to the yard for recreation. It was around 2:30 p.m. Now at Lawrenceville there are six different buildings that house inmates [...]