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The Seventh Sense

A death cloud hovered over the prison. My Seventh Sense was still dormant. Chico walked around the yard against the flow of traffic—the first omen of doom, and I… More

Convicts and Communities

The reinvestment of dignity into hopeless convicts—which is after all the definition of rehabilitation—is not much in vogue in America. There is little urgency to rebuild broken individuals and… More

An Indeterminate SHU

An Indeterminate SHUChilled gusts slice through razor wirecreeping around the window's edgelike ants teeming over breadcrumbs.Rats intrepidly stalk the tier sniffingremnants of tonight's repast. I pay them no heed.I… More

Paralegal Training for the Formerly Incarcerated

The Paralegal Training for the Formerly Incarcerated (PTFI) is a job-skills training initiative. The program offers a certified paralegal training to formerly incarcerated individuals and helps with job placement.… More

Turds

Scene 1The setting is a street corner in a residential neighborhood of the mid-1960s. The corner of a lawn enclosed in a picket fence is down right. A street… More

Day One

There I stood in that cavernous hallway, handcuffed to someone I didn’t know and probably never wanted to know. About twenty of us just standing there, scared half to… More

Kitchen Workers

The damp heat grabs me like a childhood monster with clammy paws, pulls me in, smothers my body and makes it hard to breathe. I sweat profusely from the… More

Feeling(s) Cheated

From 1995 to 2005 I was on Paxil, a medication that, ostensibly, was to help me in the areas of depression and obsessive compulsive thinking. As I look back… More

Doing Time

Doing TimeSunday evening Mom and Dad unwind on the couch,her full black hair lays against Dad’s shoulder.The iconic stopwatch fills the screen, the second handsweeps north, folding its final… More

A Time to Forget

THE SETTING is the living room of an apartment filled, almost cluttered, with a mixture of modern and old-fashioned furniture—vases, lamps, bowls, small tables and cabinets containing all manner… More