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Johnnie, 41

Johnnie, 41

Stories

Meet Johnnie…

 

Last year she developed feelings for me. I know I’m a burden, she has six kids and has been married twice. She didn’t want to show her feelings. Instead, I was mean and pushed her away, I thought it was for her own good.

It became what it wasn’t meant to be. She wanted me to be her prince charming. We don’t talk anymore. She was all I had left. I’ve known Sara my whole life. I babysat and raised her since I was 19 and she was 15. She got locked up and then got out. She was really there for me. She gets it in here. She wrote to me, sent me money, packages and paid for lawyers. She was my best friend and loved me. She is dear to me. She was there for 13 years. We have a history.

I think that people misconstrue what prison is, and don’t know what goes on here. It’s traumatic for me. I am homesick all the time. Living here is like a nightmare, I hate it. I did wrong, but not that wrong to suffer this. All humans make mistakes. We’ve all done some things wrong.

This institution has taken so much from me. They lost all my pictures of my loved ones that passed away, including my mom. I try to transform it into a positive. I believe in the law of attraction, that there are secrets to figure out, energy to pursue. This DVD “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrnes talks about it. It was huge in 2007.

I’ve learned to avoid energy thieves, those people that ask you, “What are you smiling for?” I say, “Don’t worry about it.” I made it through years, I’ve lost family and friends. I have a good friend in here, Miguel. We have a weird bro thing. We understand what we go through, like family, even though we don’t say it. Miguel checks on me. Even Miguel’s got everything you would want, but he’s still stressed out, going through it too.

I don’t have a wife yet or other things. I do understand I would still be hurting if I did. It hurts that the person that loves you is not here. I do have support from a man who has been a pastor for 40 years. He’s like a dad. David Lucci. For 15 years he’s been here for me with everything, with unconditional love.

The secret is here …. someone leaves as another comes. 

Dennis, 39

Dennis, 39

Stories

dennis

Dennis B

Dennis B

“I learned a different way to communicate and worked on becoming the person others could come to for help. The person I always wished I had in my life when I was a boy. I strive to be better.”

Meet Dennis, 

“The baby isn’t breathing.” The baby was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around its little neck and appears to have drowned in amniotic fluid during a very difficult birthing process. He never reaches his mothers arms, instead he is swept away by frantic doctors in an effort to revive him.

The doctor returns to deliver the news “The baby is alive and breathing.”  A moment of relief. “But he was gone too long and his brain was deprived of oxygen for far too long, I’m afraid he will be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life.” Turns out he was wrong. Shortly after, the baby sparked back to life with light in his eyes and developed normally.

He was happy and loved for several years until suddenly the love stopped and he never knew what he did wrong. His father, his superman, began hitting him, administering beatings more and more often. The baby, now a boy, began hating himself as much as he felt everyone else hated him. A cycle of abuse and mischief led him to homelessness in his early teens.

Violence became his language, the way he navigated through life. It became an obsession, then a compulsion, until it progressed to murder at the age of 16 and a life in prison. The boy became a man amidst the prison violence he consumed. Again, violence helped him navigate and even thrive where grown men struggled to survive. He was never lost, because that would imply that he belonged to someone that wanted him back.

The man was sentenced to end his life in solitary confinement. He accepted it for a long time. Eventually, he and many other men in confinement starved themselves in an effort to be released from solitary or die in the process.

With the help of many, he returned to the prison general population, where he sought out every opportunity for education that he was previously denied. Fearful that it would all be taken away again, he learned a different way to communicate and worked on becoming a person others could come to for help: the person he always wished he had in his life when he was a boy.

He strives to be better. I am the baby, the boy and the man and this is my story. 📸Dennis’

Fredrick, 53

Stories

Housed: US Federal Penitentiary, Tucson 

Inmates because of their incarceration, have lost the favor of being a citizen. Many people believe that anyone in prison is the “worst of the worst” and thus deserves any hardships they receive. 

To counter that, you’d have to believe that the US judicial process is perfect: that EVERY person convicted was done so fairly. I ask, do you believe EVERY person sentenced was done fairly? Do you truly believe the judicial system is 100% accurate or merciful? We’ve established that the judicial system isn’t perfect, now are you willing to believe that sometimes people are falsely accused? If even ONE case shows that an inmate was falsely accused, then the belief stands that every inmate deserves to be re-examined. I’m not saying every inmate got robbed of justice; to be sure, many people need to be here. But I’d like you to consider that many times, the courts get it wrong for two basic reasons: one, human error, and two with malice. There’s a common term used in the inmate appeal process called “Ineffective Assistance of Counsel”. What does that mean? Often, especially in federal courts, the accused is assigned a public defender, who is supposed to represent the accused. The problem is that the public defender works for the court, not the accused. That person gets paid whether they win their case or not. Public defenders don’t get a penny more for properly defending the accused. If they have ten clients, none of them paying, do you really think they will spend 30 hours a week on a guy sitting in jail, when he or she has nine other identical cases, NONE of which is going to net them an extra dollar? Public defenders often don’t give their client their best effort, basically going through the motions, leading the accused to take a plea, making their workload easier. The accused gives up on his rights or if they take it to court, gets the minimal help. Only when he gets to prison, after he’s found guilty, does he find out the critical errors his public defender made that could have saved him, or at least reduced his sentence… thus ineffective assistance of counsel. Many guys in prison didn’t get a fair trial, so have a little compassion

EDDIE, 46

EDDIE, 46

Stories

EDDIE, 46

The word of a transgender-woman put me in shackles, yet when her story changed to my benefit, those facts went unreported. I was sent to ‘The Hole’ (solitary confinement) for prison rape elimination act (PREA) investigation. What was supposed to be a three to five-day investigation, got a 90-day extension. My evidence was ignored. My witnesses were not called, interviewed, or even contacted. I just sat in the hole while prisoners and correctional officers continued to treat me as if I was guilty.

Correctional officers allowed prisoners to steal my property. At that vulnerable time, I was not given any opportunity to send any of my property home. When the charges against me were deemed unsubstantiated, my reputation still suffered. An educator accused me of being put in isolation for a rape attempt. Prisoners assaulted my character with the word “pimp.” Nothing could be more hurtful or further from the truth.

When I was released 22 days later, my body had to repair itself from the self-inflicted damage it had incurred from a 20-day hunger strike. I was prepared for that. What I was not prepared for was how my mind had to heal. I kept my distance from all people. Even in a post-Covid-19 world, I found it a difficult task to request that people respectfully give me six to ten feet of space. After being isolated on the word of one, space was my greatest comfort to feel safe. Weeks went by with me explaining to people my strange needs, until genuine support began to cause me to feel normal enough to begin to let my walls down. It was then and only then that my smile began to return.

Thanks to all my haters, I forgive you. But to my supporters who never had any doubt, you are few, I love you. And I love you too.

Despite my current geographical location and overwhelming odds against me, I remain with a positive outlook on my future. With permission to mourn my losses, I close. Thank you for the opportunity to share. 📸 Eddie’s only

Talking with my mother opened the door for a lot of family healing.

Dr. Marez

Dr. Marez

Stories

Meet Dr. Marez, 

“I certainly feel that victims on the other side do not get the support they deserve mentally and financially.”

Dr. Marez was teaching high school when she came across an article about an educator in a prison teaching twelve students with one book in a renovated shower. That story inspired her to teach in prison because she discovered that so many people inside are hungry to learn. Her experience in the military as a Satellite Ops. Engineer working around lots of men taught her that you get a lot further if you don’t ask a man how he feels. You ask him what he thinks.

After two years of working in a prison, she was laid off and went to law enforcement as a Field Deputy Officer. Her prison experience made her a better field officer and she realized that it wasn’t about “trail-m, nail-m, and jail-m”, but that through education she could make a large impact on the community. 

Upon returning to teaching in prison, Dr. Marez now feels like she is in a place where she is making a difference. She believes that education should be a choice, as her “experience is not to force people to learn.” She instead wants education to “catch fire” and spread throughout the prison community. 

Regarding Victim Awareness Advocate’s position that opposes free education in prison, Dr. Marez “certainly [feels] that victims on the other side do not get the support they deserve mentally and financially.” She believes that education is necessary, for they can either learn 25 ways to solve a problem or 25 ways to make a shank. To this end, Dr. Marez believes that an educated society is a civilized society and we should all be working together to create a healthier community.

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