“I didn’t do it……do you think I did it?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, all that matters is you’re in there now. Forever”
“I didn’t do it. You really think I would do that?”
“All that matters is that you were found guilty. If you ever want to get out, you are going to have to admit what you have done and start working on a plan to prove you have changed and that you are no longer a threat…”
“…so, I should lie?”
Yes. I think he did it.
That was a phone conversation I had recently with an old friend I was locked up with. He had been in prison much longer than I had when we met up at the work release center in Decatur, Illinois as our sentences were winding down. He was the little brother of someone I was friends with (more accurately - someone I used to get high with) and during our time in work release we got closer. We had the shared trauma of incarceration which had trauma bonded us.
Jim’s original case was theft. I do not remember the exact details, but he had gotten drunk and stolen a car and had the police chase him a bit before wrecking the car. What I do remember very clearly is when I was down to 2 weeks left, I returned to the work release center after work and while checking in, I noticed that Jim was in the pen. The pen was a little room (basically a prison cell with a giant window), right up front near the check-in desk, where people who were being sent back to prison were held. It was a way of making sure that we all knew that the threat of returning to prison from the pseudo-freedom of the work release center was a reality for those who fucked up.
Jim couldn’t speak to me. He just looked at me, on the verge of tears, shaking his head.
“Am I allowed to ask what is going on?”
The CO on duty, I think I remember his name as being Keith, yelled back to Jim, “can I tell him.” Jim shook his head yes. “Well, while on weekend leave (you could earn a 3-day pass if you were working full-time and had no violations) your friend decided to break curfew and get drunk with some buddies.” That did not sound too bad, but it was clearly a violation. There was more.
“Then your friend and a couple of his friends picked up a drunk girl on campus, did their thing, and dumped her in the hood. She was picked up by cops while wandering around, told them what happened, they ran a kit and – your buddy left a few dribbles of evidence.”
As felons, we give up DNA samples. I had no idea things worked that quickly, but later he admitted it was true, so they got their guy. I did not follow that case, but he was returned to prison yet only got (roughly) an additional year. When he got out, other than briefly brushing upon what happened, we did not revisit it. He did what he did, and hopefully he had seen that he had fucked up really bad and was not a threat to do anything like that again.
Jim was released about a year after me, and we reconnected. I hired him at the campus restaurant I was managing, and he did well. Eventually, I quit the job and decided to go back to college. After my first semester, Jim asked about enrolling. He had gotten his GED in prison and seemed to be making good with this life. Mind you, this was well before any of my prison activism and before I had ever even come up publicly about my incarceration, but it seemed like the right thing to do. College was opening doors for me that I had never dreamt would open and I wanted to spread that knowledge. I still do.
Halfway through his first semester, he quit showing up for class and kind of faded away. I started getting very serious about academics and spent more time with my new social circle. There was no fight, we just quit talking. I had seen on Facebook that he had moved in with a woman and appeared to be doing well. Time flew by as it often does, and I did not think of my friend much. My life was moving fast. People grow apart. I did not think much of it.
About a year later, someone who knew Jim’s girlfriend and had known that I had helped him get into school, sat down next to me at Parkland and slid the local newspaper across the table to me. Jim had been in the county jail for the past 3 months awaiting trial for sexually abusing his girlfriend’s 7-year-old daughter! I just sat there as she explained the details that the paper didn’t.
I asked, “what exactly did he do?” I had hoped, as I think most of us would, that perhaps there was just some misunderstanding. Her response closed that door. She simply and solemnly remarked, “everything.” I knew what that meant, but I did not know how to respond. I had not talked to him in so long. Was this why? It is why. He did do it. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hide it. I ask too many questions.
Later that day, I called his brother.
“So, what is up with Lil Jim?”
“I guess he is a fucking child molester.”
“Oh shit. So you think he did it?”
“Yeah, and he watched my kids all the time. I will fucking kill him if he touched my fucking kids. Fuck him.”
Jim was found guilty and sentenced to 3 consecutive 40 year prison sentences. His projected parole date is 2117. He will likely die in prison.
This all happened in 2016, and I had no intention of speaking to him again. Then my life changed. I started becoming active in the reentry community. I started working with people who had taken a life, and people who had hurt children. It is far from a glorious job, and from time to time, folks get angry with me. “How you can help people who have done those things?” I only help folks after they have been punished. After that, they need to find a way to make a life. It has nothing to do with forgiveness, it has to do with reality.
While I am not a highly punitive person, there are some lines that can never be crossed, but this is the real world, and from some reason – people cannot fucking stop crossing those lines.
As someone who has been to prison, we do not like those who prey upon victims who cannot properly defend themselves. There is honor amongst criminals, believe it or not, and we have unwritten codes. More importantly, most of us had been victimized in some fashion in our youth (not always sexually) and that trauma has lasting implications that played into our criminality. We do not like seeing the cycle continue.
I often wondered if Jim and I had stayed in contact, would this not have happened? Did I leave him behind? Should I have noticed something? Did I notice something and not realize it? Had this been happening while we were still hanging out? Was this somehow my fault? I still think about this.
About a year ago, Jim’s mother messaged me on Facebook and informed me she had been telling Jim about the work I had been doing around criminology, social work, and reentry and he had told her to ask if I would talk to him. He would like to call me if I was up for it. He was, rightfully, worried if I would want anything to do with him.
I told her I would get back to her. I got back to her in 5 minutes and told her to have him call.
My thought process:
· He was being punished by the state, there was no need for me to add to that punishment.
· He was serving 120 years in prison, so he could not hurt anyone else.
· Maybe, just maybe, I could save my old friend from dying in prison.
A week later he called. It was not as awkward as I had thought. We did not talk about his case for the first few months. I sent him books from Amazon and every few months I put a few bucks on his books for commissary. We mostly talked about me, because, well, he did not have much to talk about. He was in prison. In lockdown.
He could not believe how far I had come (I get that a lot). This caused my already evident survivor’s guilt to spur into overdrive. Most of my prison pals had gone back or died while I was on the outside thriving. Maybe, just maybe, if I had reached my current level of Social Justice Master a few years earlier I could have saved my buddy. More importantly, maybe I could have saved that poor 7-year-old girl. She is in high school now. I hope she is ok.
So, yeah, this is the shit me and so many of us working in the anti-incarceration fields deal with. We lose. Over and over. We think people are doing well and then BOOM! Everything goes to shit and we lose people and we have to swallow the guilty thoughts that we might have been able to stop it if we were better. If we could understand other’s minds, even though most of us do not even understand our own minds. Enough about me. Let’s wrap this up.
The conversation in the intro to this article was a tough one. I do think that Jim did it. I feel bad that I believe it, but I do. What is most concerning is that Jim emailed me and told me that he couldn’t make phone calls anymore because he cannot access the phone since he was the only white boy on the block and Black folks were keeping him from it. Racial politics in Illinois prisons are not a thing, at least they were not when I was locked up. Honestly, I did not really mess with any white folks the entire time I was down. All my people were Black. This didn’t make sense.
What I wonder is, perhaps they are not giving him a hard time because he is white, but because they got a hold of his paperwork, and they now know his charges. This could go very badly. I do not know how I would deal with my friend being killed in prison. These are the things that keep me up at night. This is why I study crime. Just thought you should know.
What a story. While not having lived through my own incarceration. I’ve been so disappointed when recidivism happens to those I’ve had high hopes for. But like you, I don’t give up, I’ve known some true turn arounds. And … there but for the Grace of god go I. I got sober before I killed any one drunk driving. I quit selling drugs before I got caught.
I also feel extreme sympathy for those with a predilection to children sexually. No less than what I feel for the victims. Yes, most were abused as children themselves. What an internal fight must be raging in them, with self hatred no doubt usually winning.
Thanks for writing your truth.
No. His actions are not your fault. The hardest thing to accept in fields like yours and mine is that you can’t save everyone. You’ve got to release yourself of that burden and remember you’re human and you’re doing what you can. My heart goes out to you.