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.
People Deserve Another Chance by Ashley Smith
My name is Ashley Smith—13 and a half years, July of 2026. Well, I've done every group that's been available to me, but because I'm LD, not a lot's been available until the very end of my sentence. But right now I'm in Jackson College full time for a double...
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...
Restorative Justice Now! by Michael McGaughty
While I have had paroles in the past, I did little to honor the privilege of maintaining them. I came into the prison system at the age of nineteen. I am now seventy three. I have only managed to stay out of prison for just three years since June of 1967. To date,...
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...
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...
So Long by Edward T. Walton
I’ve been incarcerated for so long. I spent three years in the juvenile system and was sentenced to two natural life sentences, eight months after my release from juvenile. At 36 years of age, I’ve spent about 21 years of my life incarcerated. However, that’s not...
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...
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...
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...
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...