Why this blog?

After you have done your prison time, you have never really done your time. That is to say, the past is never really the past; the past is always in present and the future. People who get out of prison have not, in fact, “paid their debt.” There are little fees, if we want to use that financial metaphor, which continue to accrue. Felony convictions come with a lifetime worth of interest charges that must be paid socially, economically, psychologically, and spiritually. This blog, then, is by and about one person in particular who has allegedly paid that debt to society, yet still works every day to paid those hidden costs of a conviction. I hope, as that person, that this blog will be sometimes amusing, occasionally outraging, frequently insightful, rarely self-pitying, and always truthful.

Why me? I do not fit, as you will learn, the profile of the “typical” released felon, yet because I come from a personal and professional background in which writing and analysis is considered the pinnacle of success, I feel obliged to say my piece for myself, for others still behind bars, and for those ex-convicts who don’t have the means to make their voices heard. In my pre-prison world, abstruse and and intimidating intellectuals like Michel Foucault occupied much of my time, and as dense as Foucault’s thought and language may be, his insights still remain valuable for anybody concerned about America’s criminal justice system. Here’s an example that helped inspire this blog. He wrote: “We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison, and that is is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot ‘see’ how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without.”

If reformers cannot figure out how to replace it, then this blog will talk about how I cope with it. It will talk about how I continue to wear a “scarlet letter” of my crime, both because the law demands it and many others won’t let me forget. And it will detail the hopes. triumphs, depressions and setbacks of a very complicated life after prison.