Every Sentence Has a Story
When you learn someone has spent decades—or longer—in prison, it’s tempting to judge them. But, each one of the 13,000 people in Michigan serving life or long-term sentences shares with us a common humanity.
How Prison Harms
Michigan’s prisoners serve longer sentences, on average, than all other prisoners across the nation. They are living proof that extreme punishment doesn’t work.
People serving life and long-term prison sentences are proven to age out of crime, but they’re trapped in a merciless system that doesn’t recognize growth. Meanwhile their families and communities suffer, robbed of vital connections and resources.
Healing is possible, even in the hardest circumstances. Redemption is possible for every person.
Let Me Tell You is a collection of first-person stories about the experience and impact of long imprisonment in Michigan.
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Featured
What is Forty-Five Years of Your Life Worth? by Michael Edgerton
Every day I wake up with a sore and aching back. Bones that feel every bit of eighty years old, and I wonder, how in the world did the Michigan Department of Corrections figure out how to make a mattress made of lava rocks? After 25 years of sleeping on these beds...
Before Prison by August M. Williams
My name is August M. Williams, and I’m giving you, the reader, brief insight on me as a young person. I was born in a middle class homestead, and was blessed enough to experience more joyful moments than sad ones. Both of my parents were in the house until I was...
The Clandestine Blessing by Robert Lee Bates
My name is Robert Bates. I was born in Detroit, Michigan into a family of seven sisters and two brothers. My father died one month before my birth. Mother was from the deep south with no education. Having been a domestic abuse survivor, she did her very best...
Living or Just Alive by James Liptrot
My name is James B. Liptrot, Prison number 144170 Dreams are real...
The Accomplishment I’m Most Proud Of by Rejujio Palacio
My most important accomplishment was the most difficult and was one that had to be made before I could accomplish much of anything. Stating the problem simply: it was the need to change my state of mind--to get from “here" to “there." "Here" was where I found...
I Am Ready, So I Fight by Joseph Wright
I came to prison with the mindset that I was never going home. And so, I lost myself in the prison system. If you ask me if I was ready to go home after 2 or 3 years, I would have said yeah. But deep down, I was not! It took me 8 years to change and become a man....