Meet Richard…

I picked up a brand new term the following year of 25 to life for a paper of dope. It seemed like a great injustice at the time, but in hindsight it was only payback for all the crap I got away with.

I’m still probably crazier than a s*** house mouse, not from doing drugs mind you, but from doing time…lots and lots of time, because of drugs. As a reoffender I ask, why am I here? Why do I come back? And why can’t I change? And on all accounts I’m responsible for myself. I began my prison term in 1976. Strung out again and again, prison became like a revolving door for me, until 1982 when a wheelbarrow full of armed robberies earned me 37 years. Miraculously, I only had to serve a quarter of that, but I didn’t learn a thing in prison. I picked up a brand new term the following year of 25 to life for a paper of dope. It seemed like a great injustice at the time, but in hindsight it was only payback for all the crap I got away with– including a string of bank robberies across three counties, karma is a real thing! Two decades later, after I weaseled my way out of the system yet again, thoroughly insane and with nobody to give a damn, I got myself shot trying to hold up a McDonalds. So here I am, two thirds of my 67 years incarcerated behind dope. I initially wanted to do myself in, but now I find purpose in passing on knowledge to the younger generation and oldsters too. No matter how much you hate it in here, it will never be enough to keep you out, until you come to hate the things which put you in here in the first place. So long as you harbor an appetite for drugs and criminal activities, you will always return to that stuff and inevitably find yourself in handcuffs all over again. It’s just one big tremendous waste of life, which in all our faiths is considered a gift from our Creator, to be used to glorify Him and love our neighbor. Not pillage, steal and rape him, that is my message. Go with God and you’ll never have to return or hurt anyone again. Until something changes drastically with the sentencing laws in California, such as the repeal of Three Strikes You’re Out, here is where I’ll be until death do us part.

Side note: In the second picture, Richard is sitting with Michael, our Humans of San Quentin Inside Communications Director.