Category Archives: Views From The Inside

Views From The Inside

This, Too, Shall Pass

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In a couple months, I’ll have nineteen years, day for day, in this concrete jungle.  ‘Jungles’ bring to mind wild animals and certain death around the next bend.   In here, society views us as wild animals, and for us, the chow hall can become the location of death around the next bend.

A few years ago some guys and I were on the rec yard discussing who we thought had the best chance to go to and win the Super Bowl.  A couple guys were going with the Patriots, others were going with teams no one even remembered making the play-offs in recent years. Being a Cowboys loyalist, I just knew my team was going to get up in there.

The Patriots won again.

When the discussion was losing steam, a guy we all knew approached our little circle, gesturing and speaking excitedly about a confrontation he heard going on between two cellmates.

To make a long story short, two guys were drinking hooch, got drunk, started arguing and calling one another names only two drunk people would come up with.  When we asked Lil’ K what the argument had to do with us, he responded, telling us one of the guys was handicapped and being bullied.

Generally, in prison, people tend to mind their own business. Even considering the situation, I felt like – this is the ‘joint’, the jungle – and definitely none of my business.  Being on closed custody and dealing with the constant threat of being placed in a cell with a psyche patient, we agreed to wait until we could get all the guys in question together before pursuing the subject further. 

Before the meeting had a chance to happen, a riot jumped off behind the argument the next day at chow hall.

Turns out, upon investigating the situation thoroughly, the two cellmates were as cool as two men who live together and get drunk and high often can be. As the riot was taking place, I found the guy who was supposedly getting mistreated.  I asked him if he and his cellmate were alright.

“Hell, yeah, that’s my boy!”

Go figure.

Instantly, I was reminded of the importance of minding my own business.

Everyone who went to chow that day had to start their closed custody time over, and we were put on lockdown.  Fortunately, no one was seriously injured and no weapons were involved. 

That night I explained to my cellmate what happened. He looked up from his Alex Cross novel, crumbs on his mouth from his peanut butter sandwich, and assured me, “This too shall pass.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: This is Mr. Edwards first submission here. He believes, as do we, in the importance of sharing the ‘mundane’ as well as the dramatic. Andre Edwards lives in a Texas prison and can be contacted at:
Andre Edwards #1139465
3872 FM 350 S.
Livingston, TX 77351

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Solitary Confinement, Views From The Inside

Lessons Learned In Isolation

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For nine years, I have been confined to a single man cell.  Days, often weeks, pass without leaving this space.  I deserved to be placed here. I am here because I attempted escape and was punished.   To be honest, it was probably the best thing for me – at the time.  My peer group was violent and negative, and upon arrival I was disgusted with myself for having fallen so far.  I resolved to fill the void of what I was forced to leave with positive change and growth.  I began a journey to become the man I knew I was, rather than the man my poor decisions had built. 

I quickly learned any progress I hoped to make would depend solely on my efforts.  There is no education provided to inmates in solitary confinement in Texas.   None.   Anything I’ve learned through reading is the result of donors from the outside.

I also learned tenuous relationships with loved ones in the free world are easily stressed when a person is placed in isolation.  General population contact visits allow hugs with family.  In here I am led to visitors in chains to a booth with a glass partition that forces us to speak over a phone.  What’s worse is, this is the only phone I can speak through.  General population offenders have access to unlimited fifteen minute calls, seven days a week.  Access to telephones is not allowed in solitary.

I have learned solitary confinement is an effective weight loss program.  More often than not, I am hungry at bedtime.  Despite menu descriptions like ‘fresh yellow corn’ and ‘deep rich gravy’,  I can count on the unappetizing reality of at least one or more food items arriving spoiled, and the unclean fact that it has passed through no less than six pairs of hands before getting to my cell.

One of the harder lessons – ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is never more true than when locked away in solitary confinement.  While prison administration might remove an inmate from population for legitimate reasons, once ‘out of sight’ it becomes easier to check the box that keeps the inmate in solitary than to mindfully dedicate the resources needed to rehabilitate the person and release them from solitary. 

Perhaps the hardest lesson is discovering first hand what so much time in seclusion can do to a person. I have spent years tearing down my old faulty value system and building a better one, learning how to make strong healthy choices.  I’ve made progress in so many ways, but so much isolation has begun to injure me.   A few years ago, I began to feel very paranoid during the rare time out of my cell.  For the ten  hours per month allowed out, I felt as if I was being stared at, looked at from the corners of people’s eyes.  It got so bad I didn’t want to leave my cell, prompting me to refuse medical and dental appointments.

I have never been a mental health patient.  None of my family suffers from a mental disorder.  I am rational and clear minded.  I am literal and focused.  Yet, these years in solitary have taken a serious mental toll.   To get ‘help’ from mental health staff carries a stigmatized label as a psych patient.  I was reluctant to contact them, although intellectually I understood what was happening.  Despite the understanding, I could not shake the discomfort I felt when outside my cell.

When I did finally speak to someone in mental health, I worked through the discomfort for the most part.  But recently the symptoms have returned, worse than before.   When outside my cell, I struggle to hold eye contact and find myself trying to mumble at times.  I berate myself.  I know that isolation is the cause of the distress.  I think this must be what it’s like to have a disorder – maybe like a man with Alzheimer’s who, in his clear moments, feels terrible because he recognizes he’s had bad moments, but he is unable to combat them.

I have no real treatment options.  They do not do therapy here. They medicate…  a slippery slope. I do not need medication.   I feel anxious out of my cell. This is caused by my isolation.  I am witnessing, in person, the deterioration of a human mind…  mine. 

After nine years, I no longer belong in solitary confinement.  I am a new man, if not completely, then on my way to being one.  I have had three minor disciplinary infractions during my 3,300 days here, all for covering the 24/7 light in my cell so as to sleep.   But, alas, they keep checking the box that keeps me here.

The unregulated, unmonitored use of isolation damages as many people as it was meant to ‘improve’.    Some of us will one day be neighbors to those in the free world – so shouldn’t those who wield the power to inflict these kind of lessons for years on end be held to a high standard…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Jeremy Robinson is author of The Monster Factory, which he is currently revising. Mr. Robinson lives in a Texas prison and can be contacted at:
Jeremy Robinson #1313930
Polunsky Unit
3872 South FM 350
Livingston, TX 77351

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Innocent, Sentenced to Death, Terry Robinson, Views From The Inside

Question Of Innocence

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I am innocent. I did not rob the Pizza Inn restaurant, nor did I shoot and kill its manager, John Rushton.  Ronald Bullock and Jesse Hill testified I did – their testimony the nucleus of the returned guilty verdict.  I didn’t spend the day planning the robbery with them, nor meet them after it was over – as they told the jury.  I didn’t organize their plan. I didn’t participate in it. I wasn’t in the Pizza Inn that night.

None of that happened.  But, what does my innocence matter?  Where did it get me but a bus ride to prison while shackled both by ankles and spirit to a dread that becomes so unbearable – death is a welcome resolve.  How relevant is innocence to time long gone and opportunities forever missed, when your dignity is in a shambles, you’ve been stripped of your identity and you have nothing left to call your own but an Opus number.  With no pride left for which to hide behind, to admit wrongdoing would not be so difficult – the hardest thing to do is continue proclaiming my innocence.

For two decades, I have lived the same as those who are guilty. I’ve stomached the same foods, donned the same disgraceful attire and been governed by the same rules.  I’ve looked into the eyes of men as they were moments away from being unrighteously done in, while inside my innocence has become a little less significant each day.  Capital punishment is not meant to penalize the guilty, but rather to exterminate the worthless while attempting to restore solace to grieving hearts.

Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do,” and in just a few short years, I will have been a Death Row inmate for longer than I’ve been anything else.  So, what then is my innocence but a conscientious self-declaration to get me through the day? 

My innocence is a reminder of who I used to be – so that I am not lost to who I have become…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Terry Robinson writes under the pen name ‘Chanton’, and this year he has seen the release of Crimson Letters, Voices From Death Row, in which he was a contributor. He continues to work on his memoirs, as well as a book of fiction. Terry Robinson has always maintained his innocence, and hopes to one day prove that and walk free. Mr. Robinson can be contacted at:
Terry Robinson #0349019
Central Prison
4285 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4285

All Posts By Chanton

NOTE TO READER. Please contact me at kimberleycarter@verizon.net if you saw Terry Robinson at any time of the day or night on May 16, 1999 – or his accusers, who claimed Robinson was with them for most of the day. Thank you to those who have come forward already. It is not easy for someone falsely accused to ever leave death row – no detail is too small. What may seem irrelevant – is often the most helpful.
Details of the trial will be shared at https://walkinthoseshoes.com/category/terry-robinson/

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Innocent, Sentenced to Death, Views From The Inside

Surviving The Day!

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I’ve been on Texas death row since November, 1999, and was first held with the others at the ‘old death row housing’, Ellis One Unit, that provided group recreation, church services, work programs – camaraderie.  There was a different vibe then.  Sure, men were still being led like sheep to the slaughter in record numbers, and sure, a few were innocent, some wrongly convicted and many guilty, but the deprivation of social and human interaction in all forms was not as glaring then because we were allowed to play four-on-four basketball games outdoors, able to share hugs with one another, able to lean on one another when one had some bad news and needed a shoulder to cry on, and we were able to pray in groups.  Some sat around tables playing card games, chess, or just sat in silence watching a movie or sports on ESPN.  In no way am I exulting that existence, because I can never be content as long as I am being held in chains.  I’m innocent.  But the reality of living at Ellis during that time was ‘doable’.  Man was not alone.

March, 2000, everything changed, including death row’s location and current housing.  From the moment we arrived on Polunsky Unit we were handcuffed and chained, from our ankles to our stomach to our hands by one long chain, and ordered off the heavily armed buses and stripped nude for the whole world to see.  That became the moment I knew everything was different.

We were placed in single man cells on sections that held fourteen cells per each of the six sections that encased one of six pods.  Gone were work programs, group recreation, church services and all forms of physical contact that we once enjoyed.  Morale was so low, it could be sensed within the thickness of the silence.  Suicides and suicide attempts spiked that first year.  A black, middle-aged inmate from Dallas, Clark, started shouting madly, daily, as if he was Paul Revere, saying things like, “In five years this place will be a place of madness!”  Many laughed, thinking him already mad. 

Clark and three others would die within the first five-hundred days, from unknown natural causes. They simply dropped dead in their cells.  Men as young as 26 and as old as 51 were now remembered as ‘how did they die’.  Though many surmised their depressive stress became too much to bear. 

As time passed, men started self-mutilating, one cutting his penis off and throwing it out of his cell.  Another, so consumed with religious material, set himself on fire.  One man stabbed himself in the jugular and made not a sound.  Before he bled out, he wrote, ‘I’m innocent’, in his own blood on the wall.  The following day, the Courts granted him a stay to look into his claims, to no avail.  One man ate his own eye, then ate the other.  He said it tasted like chicken.  Many hung themselves.  A few started eating their own feces.  An overwhelming number sought help from the mental health department which provided them with experimental psychiatric drugs that kept them in a nebulous, zombie-like state, in which they slept all day and could not function in a coherent manner.  Inmate-friends at Ellis became inmate-enemies on Polunsky.  Staff and inmate assaults rose substantially.  The ugly reality the aftermath, when loneliness became dictator.

Clark’s prophetic words soon became a beacon to the fact that man crumbles from the starvation of physical interaction.

I’m not exempt from suicidal thoughts, the cancer known as depression swallowing me whole from time-to-time, more often than I care to dwell on.  At times I’m consumed with thoughts of dyeing, being murdered, never getting free again and never getting another chance to feel the warm lips of a lover.  Will I ever again salivate over the seasonings and texture of a home cooked meal from my mother?  Who says insanity is all that bad?  My mind does play tricks on me. 

I want to be free.  My freedom was molested from me with false allegations, and I struggle every moment to exist within these solitary confines, my survival not based on my courage or strength, but on those who write me, encourage me and love me unconditionally.  I survive for them.

I do not know what tomorrow will bring. I’m out of appeals and the only step left is to get an execution date.  That notion weighs heavily on me, but I have given my friends a promise to continue to be me until my soul is liberated from the manacles of my flesh. 

Know this – I love you.  Doesn’t matter if you hate me or support me.  None of it matters.  For without love, we all cease to survive the day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.  Charles “Chucky” Mamou is living on Death Row in Texas.  He is out of appeals and has always maintained his innocence. For information on his case, and to support and share his story, follow on Facebook at – Charles Mamou – How Wrongful Convictions Are Made. You can also read all the information specific to his case at Charles Mamou on this site.

Mr. Mamou can be contacted at:
Charles Mamou #999333
Polunsky Unit 12-CD-53
3872 South FM 350
Livingston, TX 77351

Writing By Charles Mamou

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Views From The Inside

Karlee Ann

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She was four foot eleven, Italian,
And the biggest liar I’ve ever known.
She drank Burnett’s Pink Lemonade Vodka
And liked to be choked during sex.
At sixteen she’d slit her wrists
When she found her mother’s body
On the kitchen floor. It was blue
And as cold as ice, she said.
She was  liar and a whore
Who had no respect for herself,
Or anyone else, and hadn’t a
Single principle or moral to her name
But I loved her,
And I miss her
A lot.
She was only twenty-two
When she died.
I keep her picture on the wall
Of my cell
And tell her every morning
That I love her.
I know if I had been out there
That I could have saved her.
I also know that if I had been out there
I wouldn’t have.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.  Robert McCracken is a gifted poet, with the ability to paint a picture and stir emotion with so few words. Although he doesn’t send in his work often, I always look forward to reading his mail. He recently mentioned trying his hand at songwriting, and I have no doubt he will succeed.

Robert can be reached at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Robert McCracken LG8344
Sci-Greene
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733

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LWOP, Views From The Inside

The Inevitable Is Happening

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I would be lying if I didn’t say part of me fears this may be the end of the world as we know it.  We are all in the grip of COVID-19.

I’m currently housed at Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Adrian, Michigan, and at the time of this writing, there are no positive cases at this facility.  However, there have been cases in almost every prison around this area.  It’s inevitable for the virus to make its way here.   Not only that, on April 7, 2020, the MDOC decided to bring fifty prisoners to this facility who had tested positive for COVID-19 and were supposedly recovering.  While the prisoners are in an isolated part of the prison and administrators claim they no longer have the coronavirus, this decision only adds to the anxiety and uncertainty – adds to the fear that comes with this pandemic.

I fear for my life here.   I fear our overseers contracting the disease and spreading it to those of us on the inside.  Officers are angry the administration brought in once infected prisoners, and I’ve heard that some have said if they were to contract the virus, they were going to give it to us.  

I fear losing a loved one.                             

I fear my underlying illness preventing me from fighting off the virus if I were to contract it.

I fear the impact the coronavirus is having on Black and Brown communities.  

My worst fear, though, has always been dying in prison, and now that this disease is in such close proximity to me, I feel I am staring at death.   Why would the MDOC bring prisoners who were infected to one of the only prisons that doesn’t have any cases?  Since the COVID-19 outbreak there hasn’t been one single case reported in Lenawee County, which is where this facility is located.   Yet – as I write these words, I was just informed two prisoners in Level 1 of this prison were put in segregation with temperatures of 104° and  men in their cubes have fevers.  The inevitable is happening.  COVID-19 is closing in on me.  I hope my fear of dying in prison doesn’t start closing in on me next.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.  Quentin Jones is the founder of MYLIFEMATTERSTOO, and is serving Life Without The Possibility Of Parole in Michigan. After two decades in prison, he strives daily to be productive and make a positive impact. “I will be happy if I can simply inspire someone to become a better person. As a society, we need to challenge ourselves to become better people. We need a lot more LOVE and a lot less HATE.”

Quentin can be contacted at:
Quentin Jones #302373
Gus Harrison Correctional Facility
2727 East Beecher Street
Adrian, MI 49221-3506

MYLIFEMATTERSTOO on Facebook.

All Posts By Quentin Jones.

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Sentenced to Death, Views From The Inside

Coleridge’s Middle Finger

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Sharing the name of the apartment complex around it, at perhaps a quarter mile long, Coleridge Road rammed straight through the projects.   It was the crossbar between two semi-parallel streets that offered alternate routes to similar destinations, though their side roads led to completely different ends.  The front one was the busy mainstream people took when speeding to Asheboro’s white or blue collar districts.  People motoring on it clearly had somewhere to be, somewhere to go, something to do.  It was also a geographical cordon and dangerous to cross – nobody wanted to slow or stop.  That intersection saw a lot of accidents.  One car attempting to cross it from Coleridge got chopped in half by an SUV.

The rear street was lazier, more meandering and accommodating, but presented dangers of its own.  It veined into Asheboro’s darker areas where gunshots and crack pipes left blooming but distinctive scents in the air.  Like many of its occupants, even the projects back there went only by a nickname, ‘Low Rent’, which spoke to a key feature of their character.  Life itself got cheaper the deeper one went.

Like a giant middle finger flipping up from Coleridge Road into the heart of the complex, Kemp Boulevard looped about 100 yards uphill, past my apartment, where two friends and I stood sweating on a corner sidewalk. We shared a cigarette and peered downhill toward one of the other parking lots to pinpoint the tinny music that had pulled us outside to the curb – a rarely seen ice cream truck.  From this distance, the kids resembled roaches as they scampered toward the sugar.  Heatwaves shimmered above the asphalt, creating what appeared to be a mirage – an oasis or the birth of a metaphor for hope. Or both.

We wondered how many times it’d visit before somebody robbed it.  Then we wondered whether we could trick the vendor into handing us one orange sherbet, one rainbow push-pop, and one Mickey Mouse as we pretended to dig in our pockets for money.   It was 1993, hot as hell, and we were twelve and broke.

“They’d probably hand it to you… but not us,” J, the shortest but fastest of us said, meaning – ‘You’re not black’.  Puff nodded his agreement, and they both grinned.  I knew the look.  It teased that I looked soft, innocent – untested.

“Oh, hell, nah!  I’ve done more stuff than both of ya’ll!”  I cited the fights, the stealing, the broken windows and sliced car tires.  I was the most prolific.

“Well, you the one ain’t been to training school,” said Puff, the strongest fighter in our age bracket.  He hit the dwindling cigarette.

“Only ‘cause I ain’t got caught like y’all.”  The yet was implicit.  I felt uneasy.   We all knew prison was our inevitable destination.  It was a fact of life in the projects, the only life we knew how to live. Around Coleridge, people didn’t dream of being doctors or lawyers or firemen… if they dreamed at all.

We all got quiet.  I stubbed the cigarette butt. The ice cream truck turned onto Kemp, getting louder as it chugged up the hill and horseshoed around the bend.  It became a big, boxy, yellowish riot of glittery stickers and calliopean music as it stopped in front of us.  Suddenly we were jostled by a dozen excited children waving crumpled dollar bills or punching a fistful of loose change at the vendor.

My friends and I glanced at each other; they silently boosted me to attempt a free ice cream, but when I looked up, the vendor locked eyes with me and smiled.  After a second he scowled and shook his head hard, as if to warn me, ‘Don’t you fuckin’ try it kid’.   So I didn’t.

When he finally slammed and locked the serving window and pulled away from the curb, my friends and I gave chase and hopped onto the rear bumper. We clung to the panel-door seams and jumped up and down to bounce the truck, letting the driver know we were there, letting him feel our presence. Being seen and felt is its own sort of ice cream.  It wasn’t slowing before turning back onto Coleridge, so rather than be slung off, we hopped off and hit the ground running. We scooped up rocks and thunked them off the truck’s back, laughing as it squealed its tires to gather speed toward the front street.

Though it soon disappeared, we still heard its discomfiting moon music a few moments more, until even that was gone, leaving a sticky residue in our hearts. Ice cream dreams never lasted long in Coleridge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He has been writing for some time, and it is a privilege to share his voice. Not only does Mr. Wilkerson share his writing here, he was also a contributor to Crimson Letters, an eye-opening book released in 2020, sharing the voices of those living on North Carolina’s Death Row.

Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at:
George T. Wilkerson #0900281
4285 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-4285

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Views From The Inside

Mom-Mom

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I had come home late after a long weekend of
drinking and wondering the streets.  The house was dark.
I looked in on you and you were in bed
so I went to bed as well.  Deep in a dream
I could hear the phone ringing on the end table.
I didn’t remember there being a phone on
the end table.  But there was, and it was ringing.
With my eyes still shut, I felt around until
I found the phone and put it to my ear:
“Robby… Robby, is that you?” you asked,
in a quick, hushed voice.  You sounded far away.
“Robby, help me,” you whispered into the phone.
I could hear the fear and desperation
in your voice.  I was confused and scared,
I asked you where you were and you said that
you didn’t know.  You started to cry.
I told you to look around you and tell me
what you saw.  You said that it was dark and
you couldn’t see anything.  I didn’t
understand.  I thought to ask you whose phone
you were using, but you cut me off, and,
all of these years later, I can still hear
you say, “I’m so cold…” as your voice fades away.
When I awoke it was still dark outside and
as I walked down the hall to check on you
again, I knew.  Your room was pitch black, and I
was afraid to turn on the light because I knew
that you were there, in the dark, and I didn’t want
you to go. I walked over to your bedside and
gently touched your face.  It was cold.  You’d been
gone for hours, but were still there.  Did you not know
that you’d passed?  Were you waiting for me
to come home? Did you lose your way?  Or,
is that really all that awaits us?  I’ve heard
others talk of heaven, hell, bright lights and judgment;
of warmth and weightlessness and hovering above
your body as your entire life replays
itself before you; of deceased loved ones,
gathered around, telling you to go back,
that there’s still work to be done amongst the living.
I hope that these things prove true, for them,
but for me, I know in  my heart that when I die
it’s going to be dark and it’s going to be
cold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.  Robert McCracken is a gifted poet, and although we don’t hear from him often, I always look forward to posting his work.

Robert can be reached at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Robert McCracken LG8344
Sci-Greene
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733

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Views From The Inside, Writing Contests

Writing Contest – Message To A Younger You

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There’s a woman I know who plays Devil’s advocate for me.  She’s a skeptic – and I am forever grateful for her perspective.  She recently asked,  “What would ‘they’ have done differently?”  That led to a conversation about a previous post – A Letter To My Thirteen Year Old Self. 

Walk In Those Shoes receives those types of letters a lot.  Things happen in life, paths take us places and without the insight that comes with decades of living – choices are made that alter lives.  I lived through those years and made my share of wrong choices.  I got lucky – or blessed.  I’ve watched the next generation play with fire.  ‘Use’ a little.  Carry ‘that’ for protection.  Go to that ‘place’ – because they are invincible. Nothing can go wrong.  But plans sometimes go awry. 

That’s the theme of this writing contest:  If you could drop a piece of paper, a message, a letter in the dresser drawer of your younger self – what would it say?  I say it all the time – be vulnerable.  That may mean writing about your own insecurities. 

As always – only those who are incarcerated are eligible to participate. 

We can’t accept anything that has been previously published.

Submission is free – BUT, even if an entry doesn’t win, we consider entry permission to publish and edit.  Sometimes we get so many excellent entries, they can’t all win, but they need to be shared.

Entries should be 1,000 words or less.

Submissions can be handwritten.

As done in our previous contests, I will narrow down the entries to the top ten, and then hand them off to individuals to rate the writing with a point system to determine winners.

PRIZES: 

First Place:  $75
Second Place:  $50
Third Place:  $25

DEADLINE:  May 31, 2020.  Decisions will be posted on or before July 10, 2020.

MAILING ADDRESS:

Walk In Those Shoes
Writing Contest Entry
P.O. Box 70092
Henrico, Virginia  23255

As always – I’m excited to see what comes in.

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LWOP, Views From The Inside

Field Trip Reflections…

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When the officer woke me at 4:00 a.m. to get ready for the one hour ride to Duane L. Waters Health Center, I had to mentally prepare myself for what I knew I would see.  I’ve been there before, and I knew death would be there, up close and personal.  It’s not unusual to see a dying prisoner being moved around the facility. 

Duane L. Waters Health Center is the MDOC’s prison hospital, located in Jackson, Michigan.  Every prisoner dreads going there – partly because of the ‘healthcare’ and partly because the building itself reeks of death.  It’s also where they house the hospice prisoners.  I had to go today for a hearing test for the loss of hearing in my left ear.  I’ve been dealing with it for almost a year, and today was my day to go to DLW. 

As I entered the building in shackles, the foul smell of human suffering and deterioration immediately filled my nostrils and the torment of death by incarceration filled my body.  After being unshackled by the transporting officer, I made my way to the crowded waiting area, where I saw a man I have been serving time with for years walk by.  The sight of him shook me to my core.  All that was left was a shell.  The man I knew had deteriorated, and I could see death practically knocking on his door.  I hadn’t prepared myself to see someone I knew in such bad shape.

The wait can be lengthy at DLW, but the sight of the old head in such bad shape made the couple hours feel like forever.  He’s me.  I’m serving life without the possibility of parole.  I’m sentenced  to die by incarceration.  I’m 39, and to most, that’s young.  But I’m twenty-one years in on a sentence of forever, and I can’t help but notice my health deteriorating.  I think every prisoner’s worst fear is dying in prison, but for those of us serving LWOP in Michigan – we will probably die at DLW. 

While I was waiting, thinking about what I’d just seen, another guy I knew entered the waiting area.  He works in the hospice unit.  He told me he recently sat with one of the old heads I had a lot of love for – as he died.    

So, here I am in the wee hours, reflecting on a day in which I saw my reality – what the final days of death by incarceration look like.  Death is promised to everyone, and for those of us whose worst fears come true and we die in this place, it will be alone in a dark prison hospital like the one I saw today.  Over the last six months six men I have been doing time with died after serving decades in prison.

Today’s trip replays and thoughts run rampant in my mind, preventing sleep as I stare at the concrete walls of my cage.  My pain is real –  and it gets realer by the second…
by the minute…
by the hour…
by the day…
by the week…
by the month…
by the year…

by the decade.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.  Quentin Jones is the founder of MYLIFEMATTERSTOO, and is serving Life Without The Possibility Of Parole in Michigan. After two decades in prison, he strives daily to be productive and make a positive impact. “I will be happy if I can simply inspire someone to become a better person. As a society, we need to challenge ourselves to become better people. We need a lot more LOVE and a lot less HATE.”

Quentin can be contacted at:
Quentin Jones #302373
Gus Harrison Correctional Facility
2727 East Beecher Street
Adrian, MI 49221-3506

MYLIFEMATTERSTOO on Facebook.

All Posts By Quentin Jones.

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