Prison Reform

Apr 17

“I’m sixty-two now. I have three more years. I sold heroin. A lot of it. I had forty people working for me. If you were to ask me thirty-four years ago what it was going to be like in prison, I couldn’t have imagined. It’s been the same thing every day. Everyone I care about is gone. My mother passed. My father passed. My brother and sister. If I look backwards, I’ll lose my mind. I just try to keep busy and take it one day at a time. I’ve done every self-help program in the system. I’m the lead facilitator for the Men of Influence program. We teach behavioral skills, financial management, and entrepreneurship. In the five years that I’ve been in charge, we’ve graduated 250 people, and only one has come back to prison. I tell them: ‘Don’t let me be your future.’ And if I could say one thing to everyone who reads this interview. I want to apologize for the harm that I caused. If I could go back in time and correct it, I would. But that’s what I’ve been trying to do for the past 34 years. I grew up in the Baltimore projects. Everyone that I knew had nothing. I was trying to improve my life with the information that I had at the time. I grabbed the wrong rope. I’m sorry if I caused generations behind me to go astray. It wasn’t my intention to bring pain to the community. And I really think that when I’m released, I can be an asset to society.”

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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