Stories
Prison is designed to disconnect people from the rest of society. As we listen to their stories, we begin to heal those connections.
Here you will encounter challenging and sometimes difficult language and ideas: Please take care as you explore. We share it all in the spirit of broadening our collective understanding and envisioning a different future.
Reflecting Back by Sharon Hunter
I was taken from my mother at the age of two, with seven of her 13 children. My father was deceased. I was placed in an orphanage. I lived there from 1968 to 1984. The orphanage was a home and school. It was Bible-based and very strict. The same opportunities in a...
A Dream For Freedom by Mr. Kim Moss
BEFORE PRISON I was a young man growing up in inner-city Detroit, and like any other young man, I had dreams and ambitions of being successful in life. Making my Mom and Dad proud to call me their son. Life was good for me. I grew up in a loving home, raised by my...
Redemption: A Quest For A Second Chance by Jason Hicks
I was roughly one of 70,000 fortunate children adopted throughout the United States in 1969 (A notable booming year according to Historical International adoption data). Adding to my good fortune was landing with a set of parents who were both exceptional and...
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 Shameka Layton
The household I grew up in consisted of myself, and six siblings. Since we lived in a two bedroom house, all the children shared one room, with the boys in one bed and the girls in another. Religion was optional so I chose to attend Catholic Services with my...
Imagine Dying Waiting To Be Free by Larry R. Carter
Prison is a kicking. They kick you, and they kick you, and they kick you. If you die behind these walls, they kick you again to make sure you are dead. It is a figurative kicking, but it is a kicking all the same. In 1997, at the age of 44, I was convicted of...
The Heart of Forgiveness is Hard by Daniel Teribery
I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had made just one small decision to alter my path away from the destruction and pain that I was going to cause. These words played over and over like a worn-out tape in my mind. For so many years it felt...
Things You Can Learn In Prison (But Don’t Have To) by Gene Anderson
The title can mean at least two things. One is that even if you go to prison it doesn’t mean that you will learn anything. The other is that you can (and should) learn many things that prison can teach you without having to go to prison. It’s this last point that...
Hatred, Confusion, Abandonment and Redemption, and Love That Restored Me by Robert Perry-Bey
Ann was in the hospital, getting ready to give birth to her first child. After she had me, on February 28, 1969, she thought about her future because her husband had been unfaithful. Once she was released from the hospital, she went home to pick up some of her...
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...
Good Chance I’ll Die Inside by Roger Ruthruff
My name is Roger. I have been a prisoner in MDOC for more than 35 years. I was convicted of felony murder as an aider and abetter when I was 18 years old. I am just as responsible for taking human life as the person who landed the fatal blows. I planned a robbery...
Painting A Picture of Regret by Darrell Sharpe
First and foremost, I would like to apologize for the picture I am about to share with you because of what it has done to me, and what it will likely do to you. I searched through my stack of pictures carefully to find one that would vividly illustrate to you the...