This is Ernest Parker, proud father and grandfather.  His warmth runs deeper than the smile.  His friends speak of him fondly, and I recently had the privilege of reading a letter he wrote, in which he described a fellow inmate.  Of his friend, he said, “His smile is like a beacon of light shining in the valley of despair.”  While speaking so highly of his friend, Ernest Parker also described his home as the ‘valley of despair’.  His home of nearly three decades has been a federal prison.

A few weeks before Christmas, 1990, Ernest Parker – Parker Bey to his friends – pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute a mixture containing cocaine base and possession with intent to distribute black tar heroin.  Less than two years later, in 1992, Ernest Parker was found guilty of conspiracy with intent to distribute in excess of five kilograms of cocaine while in prison.

That was almost thirty years ago.  This coming December, as the rest of us prepare for and celebrate the holiday season, Parker-Bay will begin his twenty eighth year of incarceration.  This autumn, he will celebrate his sixty-third birthday inside a prison. When he was first incarcerated, he had a ten year old daughter.  She is all grown up now, and has a daughter of her own.  Parker-Bay’s granddaughter will turn twelve this year.

Mr. Parker is not alone.  He, along with thousands of other grandfathers, are nearing the end of the their lives behind bars, at the same time that we have an administration that is speaking of getting tougher on crime, talking of resorting to the death penalty for some drug crimes.

Parker-Bey was drug dealer.  He was not a wealthy man using his status to belittle those he felt beneath him.  He was not a murderer.  He was not an arsonist.  He was not an abuser of children or women.  He was not a well-paid doctor writing prescriptions to addicts and abusing his position knowing full well the medical repercussions of his crime.  He was not a rapist.  He was not guilty of assault or armed robbery.  He has never been any of those things, but something he is known as today is a ‘good friend’.

At my request, Mr. Parker wrote to me about his case.  In his letter, he shared with me some of his frustration with his former lawyer and how he requested that they do things that were never done.  He also spoke of evidence he feels could have helped him that came up missing.

There are things that I know from my own life experiences and what others have shared with me time and time again.  Courts aren’t fair.  Anyone who thinks they are has not been very involved with them.  Guilt and innocence, reality and fiction – those things are often interchangeable in a courtroom.  Without talented representation that has your best interests at heart and behaves as your advocate, a person is very likely to experience that reality.  Lawyers, prosecutors and judges – they write the story.  That is reality, and it is just as real as Parker-Bey’s words to me describing his longtime home as ‘the unwholesome depths of a human warehouse’.  Ernest Parker, father, grandfather, good friend, former drug dealer, lives in a human warehouse, one of the thousands stored there as part of America’s failed ‘war on drugs’.

ERNEST PARKER can be contacted at:
Ernest Parker #02816-089
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 1000
Milan, Michigan 48160

As Grandpa gets down to her level, smiling for the photo, he knows it may be the last time he sees her for a while.  Not long after this photograph was taken, Robert Booker made the fifteen hour move west from Michigan, through Indiana, Illinois and Iowa – all the way to Yankton, South Dakota, where he settled into his new home on what was once a college campus, but is now known as Yankton Federal Prison Camp.  We have so many prisoners, we really do turn schools into prisons.

Booker talks of how beautiful the place is, the skies filled with hundreds of geese travelling in one direction one day and in the opposite the next, searching for something.  The trees hold nests too numerous to count.  The food’s better than where he was before.  The people are respectful.

To his friends, he’s Gino, or Bob, or Bobby.  To some he is Robert.  To the littlest ones, he is Grandpa.  Regardless of who he is to them – he is currently far away.  But, no matter where he has been geographically for the last two decades, he has been ‘removed’ from them all, cut off by concrete and fences, phone rules, mail restrictions and visitation room requirements.

Robert Booker has been without his family for nearly twenty-five years.  He missed dinners, holidays, graduations and funerals.  He missed watching his children grow and seeing his parents buried.  Currently, he’s missing taking his grandkids to the park, telling them tall tales, and holding their tiny hands in his while they cross the street.  He’s missing every single one of their ‘firsts’.  He lost one generation and he is currently losing another.

Booker isn’t a danger to himself or anyone, that is why he is housed in a ‘camp’.  He’s proven he is not a security threat and has spent the last two and a half decades writing.  Not just writing, but achieving goals many writers only dream of.  He’s worked hard, authoring six published books, with another fifty manuscripts in storage.

In spite of that, the federal government spends over $30,000 a year to keep him far removed from his family and housed in Yankton, South Dakota.  That figure becomes three quarters of a million dollars if multiplied by twenty five, the approximate number of years that Booker has been incarcerated.   That’s a lot of money to keep a man that is no threat to anyone from going home.

The housing costs do not include the money the government has spent to fight the legal battle to keep him behind bars.  Mr. Booker was arrested June 29, 1994 on charges that included possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute crack cocaine and operating a ‘crack distribution house’.

On April 13, 1995, Booker was sentenced to twenty years in federal prison.  That wasn’t enough, and in July of 1996 he was sentenced again and given thirty years.  A year later – Booker was again resentenced, this time getting Life.  It’s hard to understand why so much money would be invested to keep one nonviolent individual from ever being free again, and it would be difficult to calculate how many thousands of dollars were spent in order for the prosecution to achieve that goal.  It seems the man hours and funds could be spent on something much less destructive and more productive.  It defies logic, really.

Today, nearly twenty five years after his conviction, Robert Booker is a loving father, an adoring grandfather, an author, and friend to many.  There was a war started decades ago that has not improved the drug situation in this country, but rather continues to feed the hunger of the largest mass incarceration problem in the world – the overpopulation of the prisons in the United States.  This destructive pattern is not only filling our prisons to overflowing, but also destroying families, leaving large sections of society feeling hopeless, helpless and targeted – with good reason.

Twenty years into Booker’s life sentence, the sentencing guidelines  changed, reducing Life to 38 years.  Then, before he left office, Obama granted him clemency, once again reducing the sentence, this time to thirty years.

Yet, Robert Booker remains in prison to this day.  He is serving his time as a trusted inmate, walking the halls of what used to be a college campus in Yankton and watching the geese fly by.  He continues to miss all of the ‘firsts’ with his grandkids, walking in endless circles around a track, and writing.  And the government continues to fund his incarceration in order to punish a man who has already been punished, reform a man who has already been reformed, and keep a man they know is not a threat to anyone far removed from those who love him.  For what?  Robert Booker is the face of the fallout of the failed war on drugs.

AUTHOR’S NOTE.   Robert Booker loves to hear from people and readers of his books.  He can be contacted at:
Robert Booker #19040039
Federal Prison Camp Yankton
P.O. Box 700
Yankton, SD 57078
Booker’s books can be purchased at his Author Page on Amazon.