If you are the type of person who doesnât dwell on dreary details, you rarely consider prison unless it is to wish that an infamous cretin be sent there. Until I came to prison, I hardly thought anything of it. Bad people are stored in prisons until they achieve the...
We are pleased to share this Opinion Piece in The Oregonian by guest columnist and frequent AI blogger Martin Lockett. I had been drinking all day on New Yearâs Eve of 2003 and then, had gone to a party to celebrate more. Later, as I drove my twin brother home, he...
Christmas is a festive time of year, when family members get together to enjoy robust meals, open presents, and share good ole' rare quality time. During the holidays, people tend to let bygones be bygones, differences become trivial, and allow their love for one...
Being in prison for now fifteen years, it's pretty obvious that I have spent countless hours, days, and nights waiting: waiting for what will be my eventual release. On a daily basis, I'm forced â well, conditioned is more accurate â to wait for more mundane things...
It's not too often that we take time in our day to reflect on the many good things we have: a job, healthy kids, a home in a safe neighborhood, food on the table, and the list could obviously go on for pages. After all, we are so preoccupied with the hustle and bustle...
We are no doubt in a time where evil has been on the rise, public discourse has turned hostile, demagoguery appears to be a winning recipe for political office, and the divides among demographics in our melting pot are as pronounced as I can remember in all of my...
Is Amerika preparing its children for a life in prison? According to the modality used by Sheriff Bob Gualtieri and his staff at the Pinellas County Jail to deal with violent inmates who prey on society, and then are housed with the general population inmates -- the...
While certainly not as grossly unjust as it was prior to the 1980s, incarceration is still an incredibly dehumanizing experience, and given that people are incarcerated for years at a time, imprisonment in the United States often permanently scars a person to the...
In the movie Shawshank Redemption, one of the incarcerated characters, Red they called him, went before the parole board. He had been in prison for over 30 years at that point, and one of the members of the parole board asked him, "Do you think you have been...
Any woman in a relationship with a man in prison can attest to the fact that there will, unfortunately, be many in their families and inner-circle of friends who don't approve of their relationships. Many who are critical of these relationships, however, are not...