Prison Reform

Apr 17

“I was alone with four kids. My mother was sick. I was making $500 a week working at a restaurant in Harlem. This Colombian woman told me she could help. She said, ‘We need honest people like you.’ I really needed the money. They gave me a job as a transporter. I drove cocaine from Manhattan to Massachusetts. They gave me some extra to sell at the restaurant. I only had a few clients. I did it for two years. I never did any drugs myself. Then I was set up in a sting by the same woman who got me started. I knew I’d done wrong but I’d never been in trouble before. I thought I would do a little time in jail. The detectives told me: ‘You’re a leader. You’re this. You’re that.’ The lawyer told me to sign these papers. I didn’t understand what to do. They told me I didn’t have a chance at trial. They told me they were helping me. I was given 25 years.”

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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