Prison Reform

Apr 17

“I was a good student. I did football, karate, basketball, all sorts of activities. I never skipped school. I first sold drugs when I was twelve or thirteen. It wasn’t a full time thing. Just whenever I needed money. My mom was raising four of us in a one-bedroom apartment, so we didn’t have money for clothes. I just needed enough to keep people from focusing on me. Just enough to keep moving. But as I got older, it cost more and more to stay up. Girls came into the picture. I wanted to impress them. I started dealing more and more, and all the other activities faded out of my life. I tried to study nursing after high school. I paid my tuition with drug money. But I lost focus after two years and fell back on drug dealing. I thought I could be double-minded. But it’s not possible. You can’t do good and bad at the same time. The bad always wins. There’s no such thing as Robin Hood. Nobody wants to hear that you’re dealing drugs to feed your family. Prosecutor doesn’t want to hear that. Society doesn’t want to hear that. The system doesn’t want to hear that. There’s a verse in the Book of Ezekiel, I forget which one, but it talks about this. It says something like: ‘If you do all good, and one bad, the good will not be mentioned.’”

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“I’ve been teaching the GED course for 21 years. I’ve helped over 300 students get their certificates.”

“I met Donald when I was twenty-six. He pursued me relentlessly.”

“I’m sixty-two now. I have three more years. I sold heroin. A lot of it.”

“I knew a person who worked for an insurance company. I’d give her some money and then she’d give me all the information I needed to open fake credit lines.”

“I was convicted of distributing a large amount of crack cocaine.”

“I was in college when I started. I was going to school and working at a print shop.”

“I’ve organized a lot of programs in prison. One of the classes I started is called Creative Parenting.”

“My dad couldn’t handle me. My mother was an alcoholic so he raised us on his own.”

“I was a good student. I did football, karate, basketball, all sorts of activities.”

“I got caught up in a little something. I’ve got twenty days left.”

“I’ve got a daughter out there. I’ve been gone for 23 years now. It’s really hurt her.”

“I thought it was a bomb at first. It pushed the building, so I was thrown against the wall.”

“I was alone with four kids. My mother was sick.”

“My father died when I was six. He drowned on a fishing trip.”

“I was working at a nightclub in Honduras, making $4 a night, and some guy tells me that I can make $6,000 in twelve days just by working on a boat.”

“My childhood ended early. I was sexually abused by two family members until the age of eleven.”

“He’s a beautiful person. He always tells me: ‘We’ve got to find a way to win by losing.’”

“My mom was a single mom and there were nine of us. All of the kids worked in the fields.”

“This is my fifth time in prison. Every crime I’ve committed has come from my addiction.”

“I was studying landscape architecture at Penn State and dealing drugs on the side.”

Adam Parks https://apollocreativeco.com