25 Years in Prison for a First-time, Nonviolent Offense

In 1991 I got busted by the feds for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense: selling LSD at 15 colleges in five states. I was a kid, barely out of my teens, and was determined to be a great American anti-hero. Facing 20 years to life…

FishKILL Vigilantes: The Murder of My Friend Sam.

By Erik Jensen

“There are a lot of things people…

Private prisons could be the charter schools of incarceration

The Story Behind an Infamous Escobar Cartel Assassination

Perverse Incentives in Corrections — Kickbacks

Innocent Man in Prison for 45 Years

Cleve Heidelberg has been in prison for 45 years. Convicted of killing a police officer in the early morning hours of May 26, 1970 in Peoria, Illinois. He was sentenced to 99 to 175 years of incarceration. Now at 72 years old, the injustice of Heidelberg’s conviction…

Incarcerated? Destitute? Here’s your bill.

Thanks to decades of rising costs in our criminal justice system, state and local…

What Prisoners Think of Donald Trump

*This article is a repost of my peice published on vice.com

It’s safe to say Donald Trump means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some people think he should be the next president of the United States, some think he’s…

Inside the World of a Prison Chess Master

The ultimate thinking man’s game becomes something else entirely behind bars

*This is a repost of an article I wrote for vocativ.com

The Prison-Dorm Continuum

This is a repost from an article I wrote for OZY.com

Twenty-five years wasn’t something that I wanted to waste. When I arrived at Manchester Federal Correctional Institution in the southeastern foothills of Kentucky in 1993, I decided to make the most of a…