Hope on the Inside

  "Ugh! I have a callout to see Dr. L today," another prisoner recently lamented to me. "She always takes from us rather than...

  I've noticed a significant difference in the type and "quality" of prisoners since coming to a level one minimum security pr...

  The last several years, Michigan's legislature has sat on a bill called "Second Look Sentencing." This bill would allow pris...

Fall is my favorite time of year. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. There's just something I love about the cool mor...

  When Gretchen Whitmer first ran for Michigan Governor, she touted herself as friendly towards prison reforms. She even selected a Lt. Gove...

  Recently, while walking with another prisoner on our prison's big yard, I noticed a gathering of gang members. They'd pulled sever...

  Hope can be a dangerous thing in prison; however, without it, prisoners lean into despair, sometimes choosing to take their own lives. Oth...

  In prison I facilitate (teach) an addiction recovery group called Breaking the Chains. It utilizes some Alcoholics Anonymous materials, as...

  Today, as I write this, it's Labor Day. This holiday, like most in prison, is always a disappointment. Yeah, it's a day off work, ...

  The Michigan Department of Corrections continues to be plagued by staffing issues, and the shortage has been increasingly affecting how th...

  This past week, we had another traumatic experience in my housing unit. About a year ago, a distraught prisoner jumped from the second gal...

A few weeks ago, the prison yard was abuzz with gossip and rumors. This is not an uncommon occurrence in prison, only this time it wasn'...

I saw the tail end of a news story this morning about a man in Missouri, named Christopher Dunn, who spent 34 years in prison for a crime he...

Last week, just a few days before the attempted assassination of Trump, the Michigan Corrections Officer's union made a remarkable reque...

  Wow. What a week. I thought I knew what I'd be writing about this week, but the recent assassination attempt on Trump has overshadowed...

Earlier this week, while watching a local news channel, I saw an interesting story. The Michigan Corrections Officer's Union has asked M...

So many of the outcomes in our lives are the results of choices. It's a common human condition, I suppose, for us to choose badly, and t...

    "Happy Father's Day!" I heard ringing out, back and forth, Partridge Family style, between guys in the hole during count t...

  Michigan has had a crisis in its prison system for years now. The MDOC is severely understaffed, and it's been that way for a long tim...

  Sleep deprivation, bright lights, nakedness, exposure, and isolation. You might think of these as devices of torture used by various count...