White-Collar Journal

Notes from Exile: Being Here

John DiMenna — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 22:01:13 GMT

Another entry from my prison journal.

BEING HERE

The being here never

leaves[ you,

not even for a

moment.

Every morning starts

the same.

Day one or a thousand

and one,

I should be somewhere

else.

If this piece resonated with you, consider sharing it or leaving a comment. To support this work and help spread awareness about justice reform for white-collar defendants, subscribe to White-Collar Journal and stay connected. John DiMenna is a member of the White Collar Support Group.

To leave a comment, Substack may ask you to verify your email address (a one-time step to prevent spam). You don’t need to subscribe or create an account. Just check your inbox for a one-time link.

Justice Notes: Origins of A Memoir

John DiMenna — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:24:29 GMT

Origins of a Prison Memoir

Shortly after my release from federal prison, I applied to PEN America’s Writing for Justice Fellowship. At the time, I was still struggling to understand what had happened to me and how to write about it.

Like many inmates, I kept a journal while incarcerated. But I soon found that a traditional journal was incapable of capturing the experience. It recorded events, routines, and observations, but failed to reach the emotional reality of prison life.

The application below is adapted from the project proposal I submitted as part of that fellowship application. Looking back, I can see the beginnings of the work that would eventually evolve into A Different Kind of Hell and my memoir, A Prison of My Own.

PEN AMERICA FELLOWSHIP: PROJECT DESCRIPTION-IMPACT ON PRISON REFORM-PROJECT APPROACH:

The project is a hybrid form of memoir, comprised of several literary forms and is based on my experience as an inmate in a federal prison camp. Traditional, long form narratives don’t communicate the true visceral experience of incarceration; and poetry alone, is absorbed only by a narrow group of readers who must navigate its symbolic language, understood almost exclusively by its author. For the most part, inmates keep their anguish private, despite the inner turmoil that prison life presents. I believe that only a mélange of genres can effectively communicate the experience.

One of the major issues raised by prison reform advocates, has been the incarceration of non-violent offenders (especially White-Collar offenders), in favor of other remedies, such as community service and Home Incarceration, which are, arguably, more productive and less costly to the community. For example, as an alternative to incarceration, I proposed thirty-six months of Home Confinement and a commitment to work fulltime for a nonprofit development that would provide housing for homeless veterans in South Florida. Instead, the court imposed what was, effectively a life sentence, (85 months at the age of 76), and relegated me to a regimen of meaningless menial tasks that provide no benefit to society or provide meaningful reclamation opportunities. Many of the inmates at Devens (where I served my sentence) were white collar offenders, many in their 50s, 60s and 70s, and many with successful business backgrounds and still capable of making productive contributions to society, had they been sentenced to Home Confinement. They still would have been managed by the government and certainly still punished by loss of reputation, financial diminishment and their activities under daily oversight with many restriction and loss of privileges.

I believe that a visceral depiction of the experience of an elderly white collar offender will be more effective than a journalistic essay to communicate the questionable benefits of this strategy, while highlighting the emotional wasteland of incarceration, as implemented by the federal government’s department of justice through their agent, the Bureau of Prisons, an inefficient, lumbering bureaucracy whose primary mission is to maintain its own existence and the jobs it provides to themselves. I trust that my experience, through this medium will provide a compelling tableau for those engaged in the prison reform effort.

Punishment, rather than reclamation has been the true center of gravity in our current penal system, evidenced by the sentencing guideline formula which discourages judicial discretion, often resulting in terms of sentence that are disproportionate to the offense.

What I learned since the early years of my release, is that prison resists straightforward narration. The routines are repetitive, the days monotonous, and yet beneath that surface lies an emotional landscape that is difficult to describe. The experience seemed to demand multiple forms: memoir, journal entries, poems, letters, inmate profiles, court documents, and fragments of memory.

The proposal above was written before I had any real sense of what the finished work might become. Reading it now, I recognize both the certainty and the confusion of that moment. I was trying to make sense of incarceration while still carrying much of its weight.

The manuscript I envisioned eventually evolved into something different than I first imagined. But the central challenge remains the same: finding a way to communicate an experience that is at once deeply personal and largely invisible to those who have never lived it.

Justice Notes is an ongoing series examining incarceration, rehabilitation, storytelling, institutional power, and the lives that exist behind prison walls.

Prison Camp: Daily Life

John DiMenna — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:17:09 GMT

The following is another profile from my prison memoir, A Muddled Brotherhood, a collection of portraits of the men with whom I served my sentence in a federal prison camp. Like many of the inmates I came to know, Freddie was far more complicated than the crime that brought him there.

THE BARBER

Freddie was the preferred barber of the camp. He was a former Spanish drug dealer from Puerto Rico who also worked in the kitchen. He was a quiet, low-key person who spoke very little English and always greeted you in the halls with a smile.

There was nothing about Freddie that evoked a life of crime. Although heavily tattooed like the other Spanish inmates, his were all religious or family inscriptions. He had a large headshot of Jesus on the back of his right calf.

When he was cutting your hair, he didn’t even try to converse. He’d ask how you were when you sat down. But that was it.

The barber chair was the only comfortable chair in the camp, a soft faux-leather seat in the traditional barber mold. I would always fall asleep during our sessions. He charged three dollars in commissary items, and visitors used to compliment me on my haircuts.

In the halls, he always greeted me with a smile and a big round “John.” But it sounded more like “Jooohn.”

And in the kitchen, he was always upbeat, kidding with the other Spanish workers and always finding time to help me put away the dishes if I got behind.

Nothing was threatening about him.

But he was a big man, and I saw him working out one day in the exercise trailer doing hundreds of pushups and chin-ups in a row. He was a sneaky powerful man.

Everyone in the camp liked him. I doubt he had any enemies.

He had few visitors. Apparently, his family remained in Puerto Rico. I never did find out his background. I just know that he received a long sentence. He was down ten years when I arrived and had six or seven more to go when I was released.

It didn’t seem to make a lot of sense for the man I knew.

When it was announced that I was to be released, he came by my bunk, proceeded to bow slightly with a big smile, gave me a warm hug, and said the same “Jooohn.”

I think about Freddie a lot.

Such a sweet man, he was.

Up Next on White Collar Journal:

Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform

Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections

Sunday (Prison Camp): More Stories from prison

If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.

Thank you for reading White-Collar Journal. Subscribing is free, and I hope you’ll continue with me as I explore stories of incarceration, justice, and redemption.

Notes from Exile: Prison as Afterlife

John DiMenna — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:25:23 GMT

Another entry from my prison journal. In prison, routine can become so relentless, and time so distorted, that the experience begins to feel less like life than something beyond it.

PRISON AS AFTERLIFE

Some days I think this is the afterlife.

Standing at the curb not too long ago, the traffic heavy and passing quickly while I measured the physics of the vehicles and their speed and their ability to take me out, maybe I stepped off.

Taking stock of this place, it fits: the strangers’ familiar but absent gaze; always new faces, coming and going week after week; passing in silence in the hallways and baths. Then someone new, with no notice of arrival, appears out of the blue, sitting next to you in the dining hall with the same sad story of injustice and fervent belief and fantasy of early release like all the others.

It never happens.

So eternity becomes palpable as you rise, torturous day after day, before sunrise, as if a divine clock has set the time so you always rise in the dark.

Justice Notes: Homecoming

John DiMenna — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 22:01:39 GMT

At this week’s White Collar Support Group meeting, our discussion turned to reentry. Much of the public conversation about incarceration focuses on sentencing and release, as though freedom begins the moment the prison gates open.

Yet many formerly incarcerated people discover that release is not an ending but the beginning of a different struggle. Relationships have changed. Opportunities have narrowed. The emotional burden of prison often follows them home.

I wrote the following essay shortly after my release from federal prison and while still under home confinement. It reflects a difficult period of adjustment and the sense of exile that accompanied my return home.

Looking back, I no longer see reentry quite the same way. Time, family, writing, advocacy, and community have provided a measure of healing. But the emotions described here were real, and they remain part of the journey many returning citizens confront.

In light of our discussion this week, I thought it worthwhile to revisit those early days of reentry.

HOMECOMING

The moment of release is a kind of fool’s gold. A conviction to make amends, start over, and rebuild a life. But returning home from prison, the relief fades sooner than you’d think. The old failures still reside there, and prison makes the trip home with you. The experience of incarceration—its agony, sense of exile, isolation, and the misery of day-to-day confinement—lingers long after the arrival home. Even in the relatively low-security environment of a federal prison camp, confinement becomes an internal form of torture.

The presiding judge told me that I had already sentenced myself to a prison without bars. Still, a prison nonetheless, a prison of the soul, that I was not connected to humanity, disconnected from what makes life meaningful and worthwhile. He said I had a challenging life ahead and that I must figure out how to free myself from this prison of my own making.

Returning home, I embraced a life of contemplation, renewal, and self-reflection. I concluded that my crime was a failure of character, something intrinsic, revealed only under great duress and crisis.

But no one’s the same as you remembered them. Friends are uncomfortable, distant, measuring, and opportunities foreclosed. Ambivalence follows warm greetings. And then there are the questions asked and the more painful ones, not asked, but implied in half measures and stares and pauses, more revealing, hurtful than a thousand insults.

You try to put on a good face, show courage, believe it yourself for a while. But it doesn’t last, resonate. You’re damaged goods because prison doesn’t prepare you. All the stuff on the bulletin boards, the courses, seminars: resume building, reentry strategies, interview preparedness, family orientation, all bull-shit. Every inmate leaves with only a T-shirt, a new pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers, a felony conviction, and maybe $100 from his prison-store account. The excruciating self-loathing, a permanent consequence.

I had hoped that release from incarceration would provide a spiritual balm and the seeds for growth. How I wish there was one. But very little of that, like planting seeds on concrete, and failure the only real prism from which to measure. Then I tried to focus on the turning points, but it’s always a moving target, with too many to count or measure. There just isn’t a path to go back or go forward. I huddle in a cocoon and harbor the simplest entreaties and memories of my past that promise an epiphany. Still, it never reveals itself, and I remain exiled in relentless remorse and turning points that passed.

In the end, there’s really no going back. Sometimes I don’t think I’ve changed at all. No matter how many times I run my life’s reel, the ending is always the same, and so is the beginning. No escape yet from the “prison of my own making,” the prison without bars, the prison of the soul. Only the dark corridors of incarceration I thought I’d left behind.

Justice Notes is an ongoing series examining incarceration, rehabilitation, storytelling, institutional power, and the lives that exist behind prison walls.

Prison Camp: Daily Life

John DiMenna — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 22:53:05 GMT

When I arrived at federal prison, a minimum-security camp north of Boston, a muddled brotherhood was waiting for me. It was a diverse group of one hundred and twenty inmates, comprised of Hispanic drug dealers, Black gang members, violent offenders, insurance fraudsters, internet scammers, income tax cheats, sex offenders and white-collar offenders like me. Those with more serious violations had earned their transfers to the camps through good behavior at higher security prisons, and most were serving the last few years of their sentences. I was the oldest inmate at the camp, having turned seventy-six a few months before my arrival. At first, it was more wilderness than community. But, over time, we coalesced into a community, a true melting pot if there ever was one. Since my release, I’ve had time to reflect on those who were most impactful, whether they were friends, inmates I worked with or those I didn’t interact with but were present for me in some fashion and were a significant part of my experience. Today I’ll begin a series profiling those inmates who continue to haunt me as I try, like all of them, to reassemble my life after prison.

CRAZY LOU

Lou was a quirky, nerdy, former chiropractor in his fifties, who evoked the mad, crazed professor in the movie, “Back to the Future.” He was the quintessential oddball. Convicted of a major insurance fraud, he was featured on the business channel’s “American Greed” series. Although his medical designation was chiropractor, according to Lou, that was an incomplete and inadequate description of his expertise and didn’t come close to the unique medical professional he deemed himself to be. His accomplishments in this regard were disputed by all the other inmates, but he had a good audience in me, so he sought me out. He told me that he could diagnose patients with a glance, or a touch, and sometimes a sound. Many, he told me, he healed over the phone. A woman, whose blood was black, he diagnosed as genetic due to the guilt her mother had suffered during pregnancy. Another woman he diagnosed by placing his hand on her stomach and determined that a devastating cancer of the uterus was looming, and recommended that she should see an oncologist. She didn’t believe him, neglected his advice and died shortly after that. He was outraged by her indifference to his diagnosis. She called him later when her diagnosis was confirmed. But he told me that he hung up on her. “If they don’t listen to me,” he said, “they are dead to me.”

He had an unusual exercise routine, a strange series of stretches, mostly leaning to his left and right as he walked the track every day, in almost slow motion while stopping to spit every other minute. He said that spitting was essential in order to maintain good health. His spitting disgusted the other inmates. But he was immune to criticism. “They’re all idiots,” he told me. At mealtime, he devoured everything, managing extra trays of food through trades with other inmates who marveled at his capacity to eat, yet mysteriously never putting on any weight. He told me he had trained his pituitary gland with meditation.

He had been in prison for ten years when I met him, dedicating his time to gene research, synthesis of cosmology and neuro-genetics and planning to study all these subjects at Harvard when he was released. He spent hours after work in the cafeteria or library reading medical textbooks, taking notes, and listening to Metallica through clumsy and beaten-down headphones. He was convinced he would uncover the link to the above. Among his many outrageous claims was that he could levitate, or at least was on the verge of accomplishing this feat. He said he was close to understanding dark energy, which was the source to overcoming the issue of gravity. He was also working on discovering the immortal gene in humans. He told me that we are all made of the substances in the galaxy, of the same stuff as the stars and the planets. He will unlock all of it once he’s released. I believed him.

He told me I had good genes, but my posture was my weakness. He could fix me, he said, and he tried. He would have me sit in a chair, and from behind, he would suddenly quirk my neck right and left. You could hear the crack. While it never was painful, the sound was frightening. I finally refused this exercise, and he replaced it with a kind of bear hug, pinning me against the wall with several semi-violent lunges. I was convinced that we were on our way to a cure. (This is how crazy you can get in prison). But he was released before I was cured. I’ll never hear from him. But he’s out there, looking to save the world. Maybe he will.

Up Next on White Collar Journal:

Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform

Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections

Sunday (Prison Camp): More Stories from prison

If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.

Thank you for reading White-Collar Journal. Subscribing is free, and I hope you’ll continue with me as I explore stories of incarceration, justice, and redemption.

Notes from Exile: God

John DiMenna — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 23:32:20 GMT

In keeping with this week's theme of daily life in prison, the following log/verse was written during my imprisonment, recording the strange rhythms of incarceration.

GOD

is not dead

here,

not yet

anyway.

But more ritual than

doctrine.

Always a scramble for

special meal

signups,

and attendance at

service.

Christians Jews Muslims

Buddhists and one

Hindu.

No crossover or real

engagement.

More function than

fire.

And at the end of

the day,

only one God standing,

Freedom.

Justice Notes: After the Sentence

John DiMenna — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:01:42 GMT

One of the misconceptions about the criminal justice system is that punishment ends when a sentence ends. In reality, for many people, incarceration, probation, or even the conclusion of an investigation marks the beginning of a different challenge altogether. The legal system is designed to impose accountability. It is not designed to heal.

Many of us who have lived through criminal justice involvement discover that long after the legal process concludes, we are still rebuilding trust, relationships, identity, and purpose. We are learning how to move beyond a chapter that threatened to define the rest of our lives.

The following essay, written by therapist Andrew Golden, MA, LPC, LADC, explores that often-overlooked process. Drawing upon both clinical experience and research, he examines the difference between legal compliance and genuine emotional recovery, and why so many individuals find themselves struggling long after their formal obligations have been satisfied.

His observations resonate strongly with my own experience and, I suspect, with the experiences of many readers of White Collar Journal. I am pleased to share his work with you.

WHEN THE SENTENCE ENDS BUT THE TRAUMA REMAINS

BY ANDREW GOLDEN, MA, LPC, LADC

Over the years, I have worked with individuals whose involvement with the criminal justice system took many different forms. Some served prison sentences. Some never spent a day incarcerated. Some lost careers, relationships, financial security, or social standing. Others maintained supportive families, stable employment, and meaningful community connections throughout the process.

What has struck me repeatedly is that many people assume recovery begins when the legal process ends. Clinically, that is often when a different kind of work begins.

Once a sentence is completed, probation ends, or legal proceedings conclude, there is often an expectation that life will naturally return to normal. The legal process is over. The consequences have been imposed. The individual is expected to move forward.

Psychologically, however, recovery rarely follows the same timeline as legal resolution.

Many individuals discover that the end of criminal justice involvement marks the beginning of a different challenge. They must rebuild relationships, restore trust, reconnect with neglected aspects of identity, and imagine a future that is no longer organized around fear, uncertainty, or survival. In many cases, they are attempting to restart developmental processes that were interrupted months or years earlier.

Psychologists have long understood that healthy emotional development depends upon certain conditions. Human beings grow through connection, curiosity, creativity, intimacy, exploration, and future planning. Over time, we construct identities, deepen relationships, pursue goals, and develop increasingly complex ways of understanding ourselves and the world around us. Trauma reorganizes those priorities. When individuals experience prolonged periods of uncertainty, shame, threat, humiliation, or chronic survival pressure, psychological energy becomes redirected toward protection rather than growth. Attention narrows. Vigilance increases. Emotional flexibility often decreases. The nervous system becomes increasingly concerned with immediate survival rather than long term development.[1]

This process can occur in many contexts, including military combat, chronic abuse, serious illness, natural disasters, and prolonged institutional stress. It can also occur during and after involvement with the criminal justice system.

For some individuals, incarceration becomes a significant source of traumatic stress. Research consistently demonstrates elevated rates of trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress symptoms among incarcerated populations.[2] Correctional environments often require psychological adaptations such as vigilance, emotional guardedness, and caution. These strategies may serve important survival functions during confinement, but they can become obstacles to intimacy, trust, and emotional growth once life outside those environments resumes.

Importantly, incarceration is not the only pathway through which developmental interruption can occur. Many individuals experience profound psychological consequences without ever serving a prison sentence. Professionals, executives, healthcare workers, attorneys, business owners, public officials, and others may navigate investigations, reputational crises, financial collapse, public scrutiny, and prolonged legal proceedings while continuing to live and work within their communities.

From the outside, many appear functional. They maintain employment. They raise children. They attend social gatherings. They continue fulfilling responsibilities. Internally, however, many spend years organizing their lives around uncertainty, damage control, fear, and survival. Future planning narrows. Relationships become strained. Personal interests disappear. Curiosity fades. Individuals postpone goals, avoid emotional risks, withdraw socially, and suspend important aspects of personal growth while waiting for outcomes they cannot control.

Eventually, the legal process ends, but what often remains is the realization that significant portions of emotional life have been placed on hold.

In my clinical work, I have often been struck by how many individuals describe feeling emotionally frozen long after legal proceedings have concluded. The details differ from person to person, but the underlying experience is often remarkably similar. Life moves forward externally while important aspects of psychological development remain stalled. Many people are not simply recovering from a legal crisis. They are attempting to restart parts of themselves that were placed on hold during it.

Read the full essay here on Andrew’s Substack newsletter, ANDREWS SUBSTACK

Justice Notes is an ongoing series examining incarceration, rehabilitation, storytelling, institutional power, and the lives that exist behind prison walls.

Prison Camp: Daily Life

John DiMenna — Sun, 31 May 2026 22:00:57 GMT

More excerpts from Becoming an Inmate, my account of daily life inside a federal prison camp.

Appeals:

Seemed like everyone had one going. Numbers thrown around from the legal code: 2255, 2353 C or B, can’t remember, direct appeal, letters to the Warden, Compassionate Release, special consideration and many others. But there were plenty of guys who gave up. You could tell those. They were bitter, like my friend Smitty, seventy-five years old, eight years down and two more to go. It was best not to talk to him about your own efforts. He’d take your head off. “The system’s corrupt,” he said. Many inmates had spent years on the computer that housed the legal library. There were always guys on that computer from morning until the final Count. None of it successful. I was no better. It took a hundred-year pandemic to make a difference. Inmates calculate their release dates down to the hour. When there was a rumor about the prison reform bill (there’s always a rumor about prison reform), it was mostly bullshit that would have guys out in weeks. But this time, it seemed real. Guys spent hours recalculating their release, arguing with other inmates. “You have to deduct the good time first, ass hole…” The fuck you do, douche bag…. ” “Yes, you do…and then you deduct the period of home confinement and then…. ” “Your fucking crazy. You’ll be out tomorrow with that shit…” “Heh, I spoke to Levine….” “Levine???...that asshole…” “Heh, he’s a fucking lawyer…” “Lawyer, my ass. If I listened to him, Id’ve been out two years ago…” “Heh, believe what you want. I know what fuckin time it is…” Yeah, time to get real….”

And by the time the bill was passed, there were so many caveats nobody knew what was in it, and after a while, all the talk just petered out and the old gloom set in. Making it worse were the guys after who touted their misgivings all along. “I told you it was bull shit. I never bought into that crap…no one gets out before their time…” And it was Christmas time too. It seemed especially cruel.

Sleep:

Being cold is the norm here. But the Spanish guys sleep without shirts and start wars over the opening and closing of windows. The Black guys’ side sometimes with the Spanish guys but sometimes with the old White guys who are always cold like me who have to meekly parse our discomfort with the fear of reprisals. So, we just keep piling on the layers, which are never enough and only enhance the atmospheric gloom. The change of seasons and the summer warmth can’t come soon enough. But when it does, the Spanish guys start the fan wars and the Black guy’s side with the Spanish guys who eventually fight with the White guys because everyone wants the fans, which were sitting idly like sculptures all winter pointing upwards and motionless. But now, inmates stand on chairs and dare each other to alter the path of the fans. The change of seasons and the end of summer can’t come soon enough.

Visitors:

Some guys had them every weekend. Some guys never. I was somewhat in between. My wife and family weren’t nearby. Their visits rare. My grandchildren visited me once. Still up in the air on that one. My brother and nephew lived an hour away and visited me regularly. It was nice when I had them. Almost better when I didn’t.

Religion:

God is not dead here. Not yet anyway. But more ritual than doctrine. Always a scramble for special meal signups and attendance at service. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and one Hindu. No crossover or real engagement. There were some real epiphanies. My friend Steve was one. But a rare bird. Seemed more function than fire. And at the end of the day, only one God standing, Freedom.

Back Home:

The worst part of prison. You leave everyone unmoored. You can’t help. If you try, you make it worse. I made it worse. So much trouble I left behind. My greatest crime. I dreaded every phone call home: wife, children, family, friends. I had no answers.

Up Next on White Collar Journal:

Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform

Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections

Sunday (Prison Camp): More Stories from prison

If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.

Thank you for reading White-Collar Journal. Subscribing is free, and I hope you’ll continue with me as I explore stories of incarceration, justice, and redemption.

Notes from Exile: The Schedule

John DiMenna — Thu, 28 May 2026 22:01:09 GMT

In keeping with this week's theme of daily life in prison, the following log/verse was written during my imprisonment, recording the strange rhythms of incarceration.

Mornings arrive before
you’re awake.
Light or not light,
it’s still called
morning.

There is no afternoon:
lunch at Ten or
Eleven.

No evening either:
dinner at Three or
Four.

Grinding menial tasks in
between.

A long interlude follows,
and the usual distractions
fill the torturous hours:

TV and cards, books and
newspapers,

and the most favored,
exercise,

till the turning off the
lights,

and the darkness
we embrace.

Justice Notes: Aging in Prison

John DiMenna — Wed, 27 May 2026 22:01:36 GMT

As America’s prison population ages, thousands of elderly incarcerated people are facing the reality that they may die behind bars, regardless of how much they’ve changed, how frail they’ve become, or how little risk they pose to society. This powerful piece from the Prison Journalism Project, written by Robert H. Outman, examines California’s growing elderly prison population, the failures of parole systems, and the human cost of sentencing people to die in prison.

If you care about criminal justice reform, second chances, and stories from inside America’s prisons, subscribe to the Prison Journalism Project Newsletter.

The Graying of America’s Prisons

by Robert H. Outman

In late September, a 74-year-old prisoner named Woodrow died after more than 40 years of punishment.

To the guards and prison staff, Woodrow’s death was routine. It meant nothing more than another available bed and the nuisance of having to inventory his meager possessions.

To the wheelchair- and walker-bound prisoners in Woodrow’s prison unit, his loss served as an uncomfortable reminder of their own looming, ignoble deaths in prison.

California’s prisons are packed with advanced-age prisoners. People 55 and older make up about 16% of California’s incarcerated population. During the 2000s, California added more than 11,000 people 55 and older to its prisons.

Maybe they were once menaces to society. But time and brutal prison conditions have taken such a toll on their minds and bodies that they are no longer a threat — other than those who cheat at checkers. Many of these old men are dying or will die in prison, despite extremely low recidivism rates for their age group.

On average, it costs California a little more than $106,000 per year to keep someone in prison, according to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. While the agency doesn’t track expenses by age group, it has reported that in other states it can cost two to three times more to incarcerate an older person.

Right now, there are few options to gain release from prison, even once you approach death. California has an elderly parole program that allows for people to meet with the California Board of Parole if they are 50 or older and have been incarcerated for at least 20 years.

But that program excludes many other people who should be considered, including those who are sentenced to death or life without parole. It also excludes anyone who is sentenced under California’s three-strikes law for a second or third serious or violent felony conviction.

Data from the parole program also calls into question how effective it has been at freeing elderly people. Between 2014 and 2020, the threshold for elderly parole in California was 60 years old and 25 consecutive years in prison. During that six-year window, the program had only a 19% release rate, according to Recidiviz, a nonprofit criminal justice data platform.

Parole programs across the U.S. generally have low release rates, regardless of age. California is no different, receiving an F-minus parole system grade from Prison Policy Initiative. The difference here is that with low elderly parole rates, I believe the California Board of Parole has chosen to practice “senicide,” the willful or neglectful killing of older people.

Everyone should care about this issue, whether you are a practical, financial-minded person or someone who thinks with your heart first. There’s no reason to needlessly punish people to death — especially when that wasn’t their sentence to begin with.

This practice of letting changed, elderly people die in prison has taken a toll on the soul of California. And it will continue to do so until something changes.

Justice Notes is an ongoing series examining incarceration, rehabilitation, storytelling, institutional power, and the lives that exist behind prison walls.

Prison Camp: Daily Life

John DiMenna — Sun, 24 May 2026 22:00:59 GMT

More excerpts from Becoming an Inmate, my account of daily life inside a federal prison camp.

Letters

I wrote letters. Never sent most of them. To the Judge (never sent it), to my enemies (sent one or two; never heard back), to those I betrayed (I think I did; probably didn’t), to my children (never sent any of those), to my wife (only cards — too much of a coward for more).

At first, I received many letters. I didn’t want them. At least I thought I didn’t, until they stopped. And they do.

Reading

Mostly old news from the major journals: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, all the Boston papers. Guys pass them to friends. A kind of pecking order emerges. Every issue arrives late. At first, you care. News from home matters in the beginning.

Eventually, less and less.

After a while, I stopped reading them. My fading eyesight didn’t help.

In the library, I found New England weeklies from towns I’d never heard of. I read the obituaries — the best place to discover a world. Lives that still read like 1955, some other America than the one I knew. There was surprising comfort in them. In prison, you grasp at straws.

My daughter sent me The New Yorker. For books, I scavenged the computer room shelves for large-print editions. Not a great collection. A lot of Stephen King and James Patterson. Somehow, I found Elena Ferrante. Must have belonged to somebody before I arrived. No one I met there would have read Ferrante.

The library looked like the back aisle of CVS. Nothing in any order. Once, an inmate organized the books, but one morning a CO on a rampage dumped them all onto the floor, and that was the end of that.

My sister sent me large-print books I could actually read. Even then, it was a battle. When I found something with print big enough, it was often too cold to stay in my bunk and read.

Nothing’s easy in prison.

Television

The remote was everything.

Ralph controlled it in the big room. In the kitchen, it moved around. My bunkie Mike started a war over that one. Eventually they put him in the Shoe (Solitary.)

I stayed away from it.

Over time, I watched television less and less and missed it less and less.

Only my radio, after lights out, huddled in my bunk with earphones pressed tight against my ears — blocking out the dorm sounds and the Spanish guys praying — provided the solace I craved.

Neighborhoods

Even inside 10,000 square feet, there were neighborhoods.

No Man’s Land. Spanish Harlem. Harlem. The Middle East. Jerusalem. Northern Boulevard (Queens). Park Avenue (Manhattan).

Those were my names for them.

Not everyone bought in. There were some diverse sections. But over time, inmates chose new bunkies and the tribes converged.

I moved around. Started in Harlem, moved to Park Avenue, then Northern Boulevard, then back to Park Avenue just before release. But by then, Park Avenue was a neighborhood in decline.

Mack the Knife presided.

I was more cautious that time. Learning to become an inmate takes time.

Bunks

As my friend Jack described it:

“Fifty-four square feet with another guy.”

A cubicle six feet high. A steel bunk bed. A three-inch plastic mattress. Two lockers. Two plastic chairs.

One thermostat for 10,000 square feet and no air conditioning in the summer.

It’s not supposed to be comfortable. And they got that right.

Freezing in winter. Oppressive in summer.

Directional fans hung on the walls. Only a few worked well enough for nearby bunks to feel them. The fans could be adjusted, and they caused endless confrontations.

Some guys kept them on in winter to mask their mobile phones after Count. Others needed the white noise to sleep.

I bunked in both sections — with the fan noise and without it.

I slept regardless.

In prison, sleep is the only balm.

Up Next on White Collar Journal:

Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform

Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections

Sunday (Prison Camp): More Stories from prison

If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.

Thank you for reading White-Collar Journal. Subscribing is free, and I hope you’ll continue with me as I explore stories of incarceration, justice, and redemption.

Notes from Exile: Life After Prison

John DiMenna — Thu, 21 May 2026 22:02:02 GMT

Returning home from prison, the relief ends sooner than you’d think. The old failures still reside there, and prison makes the trip home with you. The following is something I wrote early after my release and while living under Home Incarceration—the most stringent form of House Arrest.

LIFE POST PRISON, STILL EXILED

It’s not like being cast upon some foreign shore among strangers and danger or strange landscapes. And it’s not even bad to be exiled — at least not for me so much as for my wife, which is typical of husbands who have failed their mates and continue to summon the same careless deference and selfish slights that border on criminality.

It’s some other kind of estrangement, an internal bereavement despite being in a pleasant place.

There is a relentless clock and mornings filled with frightening epiphanies. No matter your routine, or your stubborn refusal to break it, there is no path backward and no clear way forward. So we huddle inside a cocoon, clinging to the simplest entreaties and memories that promise some spiritual balm but never fully reveal themselves.

Justice Notes: Trauma and Addiction

John DiMenna — Wed, 20 May 2026 22:59:36 GMT

Trauma is often the hidden root of addiction, and, too often, a defining thread running through the lives of those who become incarcerated. Yet the connection between trauma, substance use, and incarceration is frequently ignored in public discourse and policy alike. For this week’s Justice Notes, I want to share a powerful guest essay from Gina Pendergraph that explores these overlooked realities and challenges us to rethink addiction not as a moral failure, but as a response to untreated pain.

Trauma and Addiction by Gina Pendergraph

Every year, thousands of Americans set out to quit drugs. They detox, they try willpower, and many of them fail. Not because they are weak, but because no one has treated what drove them to use in the first place. The substance was never the real problem. The pain underneath it was.

To lay out the terms that will be used throughout this essay, the following definitions are added for clarity: Drug trafficking is defined as sales, distribution, possession with intent to distribute or sell, manufacturing, and smuggling of controlled substances. Self-medication is medication of oneself, especially without the advice of a physician. Trauma is a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury. And demand is something claimed as due or owed.

The United States has responded to that pain primarily with handcuffs. We had “The War on Crime” in the 1960s, “The War on Drugs” in the 1970s. The 1980s brought “Just Say No,” championed by Nancy Reagan, and the LAPD’s “Drug Abuse Resistance Education,” or D.A.R.E. program. On January 20, 2025, his first day back as president, Trump signed an order calling drug cartels terrorist groups. In February 2025, he signed another order saying illegal drugs coming from Mexico, Canada, and China were a reason to put tariffs on imports from those countries and that the tariffs would remain in place until the importation of illegal drugs was significantly reduced.

Decades of failed enforcement, anti-drug programs, and education focused on abstinence have filled prisons, yet the overdose death toll continues to climb. Nearly 80,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2024 alone. Something fundamental is being missed: Why are Americans demanding so many drugs?

The United States Sentencing Commission reported that in 2024, about 30% of all federal criminal convictions were related to drugs, making drug offenses the second most common federal crime. During that year, federal courts issued 18,281 sentences for drug-related cases, with nearly all involving the production, distribution, or transportation of illegal substances.

Most individuals convicted of drug trafficking were U.S. citizens, accounting for 80% of offenders. Just three drugs made up over 85% of these convictions: methamphetamine, fentanyl, and cocaine.

Trafficking persists not because of a lack of enforcement, but because untreated trauma drives people to self-medicate, and until the U.S. prioritizes mental health treatment and addiction recovery over criminalization, the demand that fuels the drug trade will never disappear. The cycle of trauma and drug use connects to the broader trafficking problem.

The most recent data from the CDC available as of May 3, 2026, shows the United States experienced a decrease in overdose deaths to about 69,000 in 2025, bringing the country back to pre-Covid 2019 numbers after increases between 2020 and the peak in 2023. Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are responsible for tens of thousands of those deaths. Men ages 35–44 were among the groups most affected. In 2003, before fentanyl dominated the illegal drug supply, the United States recorded roughly 25,000 overdose deaths per year; today that number is more than triple, showing how untreated addiction and sustained demand have intensified the crisis over time.

The ACEs framework measures adverse childhood experiences linked to long-term health and behavioral outcomes. Unresolved trauma, especially childhood trauma, is often a primary driver of substance use, as individuals use drugs to cope with emotional pain they cannot otherwise manage. Individuals with co-occurring PTSD and substance use disorders showed significantly higher rates of childhood complex trauma than those with either condition alone.

Substance use is not the only way trauma survivors attempt to manage their pain. Trauma can trigger compulsive behaviors in different forms. Alcohol use disorder, compulsive spending, hoarding, eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia, sex or porn addiction, and self-harm are all responses to unresolved psychological suffering. What makes drug addiction uniquely devastating, however, is its ability to kill. Unlike other self-medicating behaviors, drug use — particularly with synthetic opioids like fentanyl — carries the risk of fatal overdose. The stakes of leaving trauma untreated are, in the case of substance use disorder (SUD), literally a matter of life and death.

Read the full essay here: Trauma and Addiction

Justice Notes is an ongoing series examining incarceration, rehabilitation, storytelling, institutional power, and the lives that exist behind prison walls.

Prison Camp: Daily Life

John DiMenna — Sun, 17 May 2026 22:02:09 GMT

Following are more depictions of daily prison life which I’ve been publishing for the past few weeks. The following is another excerpts from my essay, Becoming an Inmate, reflecting more of the world that emerges inside a federal prison camp.

Daily Life

Ralph, the self-appointed boss, said, “The days go slow, but the weeks go fast.” It took a while, but he was right. You find your lane, your routine, and coast. Mine was the kitchen, the track, my log, my books. After the adjustment, I settled in and turned inward.

I didn’t help the new guys. I don’t know why that was. So many helped me when I arrived. I just didn’t, unless they were in obvious pain, and then I’d help, and there were those.

Vince was one: a Spanish guy, but not from the clan. He sat at his bunk the first day, head down, dazed, lost, and afraid.

It’ll get better, I told him.

Because it does. It doesn’t get good. It just gets better. You overcome the trauma. Like everyone else, you push it down deep and just keep moving.

It got better for him. Better than I thought, actually. Certainly, better than me.

Last I saw him, he bunked on Northern Boulevard, the camp’s only mixed community. He was smiling, joking even.

I had friends, things I looked forward to. But the dread never leaves you. No matter how much weight I lost, I was always carrying more.

On the track, I’d stumble around, my legs like jelly.

And in a community, living with so many people, you’re even more alone.

I didn’t care who liked me, who didn’t. Plenty of both, none who made a difference except Steve. But he was gone early on, and I went back to being the ghost.

My writing, the one thing. If there was to be something, I prayed it would be that.

And then there were the Jews who came later.

I sought them out because I’ve always sought them out for the wisdom they provided me all my life. And because you crave wisdom in prison life, I sought them out.

Still, they weren’t there when I arrived. And when they did, Levine, Gary, and the Russian Jews were disappointing.

Then there was Russ, the crooked lobbyist, who bunked with me for a while. He was not my friend nor anyone’s friend. Lumi always called him “The Jew,” right to his face. Always a kind of joke, but I didn’t like the joke, and that’s why I bunked with him. But in the end, I didn’t like him either.

Finally, Paul arrived just before I was released. He brought me his oranges, introduced me to classical music, and grounded me as all the Jews in my life always did.

Despite entering prison at 72 years old, disgraced, divorced, and bankrupt, he was always moving forward.

“There are no other choices to living,” he said.

Paul reminded me of my friend Al, my closest business colleague, thirty years or more, more friend than my friends.

But his was the cruelest betrayal.

Not his. Mine.

Even Al, a traditional Jew, couldn’t forgive me. He had loved me too much, he said.

He’ll haunt me forever.

Up Next on White Collar Journal:

Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform

Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections

Sunday (Prison Camp): More Stories from prison

If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.

Thank you for reading White-Collar Journal. Subscribing is free, and I hope you’ll continue with me as I explore stories of incarceration, justice, and redemption.

Notes from Exile: Longing

John DiMenna — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:08:14 GMT

There were brief moments during camp life when the walls seemed to fall away for a minute or two. After meals, working the kitchen detail, I’d sometimes step outside behind the chow hall and watch the world continue without me. This was written from one of those moments.

LONGING

After meals I’d hang out in
the kitchen,
staring out at the picnic area
for visitors.

Tall pines and an old golf
course surround
it.

Lots of dead branches in
the center of the
pines.

Crooked, jagged branches like
scarred skeleton
bones.

It’s always taken me time
to see what’s right
in front of
me.

Standing between the kitchen
and the outdoor
dining,
a refreshing breeze,
the air so much lighter
than Florida
here.

Mesmerized like always at
the passing cars, trucks,
and vans.

All going somewhere, anywhere,
doesn’t matter where.

Justice Notes: The Letter

John DiMenna — Wed, 13 May 2026 22:07:21 GMT

The Letter They Tried to Stop

Notes from an anonymous incarcerated writer

For this week’s Justice Notes, I want to share excerpts and reflections from a handwritten letter I recently received from an incarcerated writer participating in a prison writing mentorship program. To protect his safety and privacy, identifying details have been removed or altered.

The envelope arrived after weeks of silence.

Eight handwritten pages. Dense cursive. Blue prison stationery. A letter written slowly, carefully, under conditions most of us would find psychologically unbearable.

The writer apologized repeatedly for the delay. He had been transferred between institutions, caught in what he described as a prison “gang roundup,” subjected to mail interference, and blocked from educational programs.

Dear Mr. DiMenna,

How are you? I pray you’re in good health. I’m glad that someone of your background and expertise could enjoy my story and offer genuine advice based upon a sincere wish to help.

I’m concerned that maybe you did not receive the entire piece. The ending to the story came when Munchie reached for the phone near the officer and it rang — prompting the officer, who was only pretending to be asleep, to awaken and answer it. Fortunately for Munchie, the call was to inform the officer that bail had been posted.

“Munchie” is part of a series involving a drug-addicted nut-case whom I use as a satirical example of the deeper macho mindset driven by substance abuse, faulty reasoning, and mental illness. I wanted to address these issues in a way that wouldn’t alienate the people it was intended to enlighten.

Yes, I have been through the arrest process on virtually every level, from juvenile to adult, so the detail comes from personal experience. I am from a family that hails from the epicenter of Tallahassee’s crack epidemic. I have met countless “Munchies,” as well as archetypes of each character I described.

I became an avid reader while in a youth facility where fiction salvaged what was left of my sanity. I attended community college and always had a knack for storytelling. Had incarceration not interrupted my rap aspirations, I probably never would have considered writing as a serious outlet.

I’m serving a long sentence for violent charges. I began writing fiction after reading novels in prison. Ever since my first project, I’ve been honing my skills, developing my literary palate, and studying the craft and niche of Black fiction writing.

I read widely. I have a GED and am trying to enroll in college correspondence programs in hopes of earning a degree in some literary field. I intend to market my fiction creatively using digital avenues and social media.

But I also need to explain the difficulties I’ve faced simply by corresponding with organizations that encourage inmates to pursue constructive outlets. Mail between prisoners and outside organizations tends to be monitored, harassed, and where possible, discouraged.

I apologize for the late response, but it has been hectic for me being transferred from one institution to another. I was caught up in a “gang roundup” initiated by a new warden. I’m only now beginning to settle into another institution.

I’ve repeatedly tried to enroll in educational and correspondence programs, but I feel my efforts are neither encouraged nor assisted. Due to allegations and classifications, I’ve been labeled in ways that prohibit me from jobs, programs, and opportunities.

This is enough to discourage the most tenacious inmate.

The thing is, all of the programs I’m excluded from were supposedly intended to help people like me.

I apply for every program and outside course I can, yet I still feel stonewalled and thwarted. If that’s not the case, then I feel mocked and ridiculed by authorities who are supposed to make these resources available.

Pen America and this mentorship is the only bright spot in my prison existence.

I sincerely hope and pray that we are not robbed of this gift provided by humane organizations whose presence in my life has made a huge difference in terms of my future prospects.

I need you to understand the oppressive policies and hostile viewpoints perpetuated against prisoners who threaten the secrecy of many unsavory practices routinely conducted inside prison systems.

These institutions seek to ensure people like me can never blow the whistle through writing.

They intercept and divert our stories, tamper with them, and otherwise aggravate us until we give up entirely.

I’m sorry for elaborating to this extent, but these correspondences have become my only source of expression and joy.

Let us make the most of it.

— Anonymous incarcerated writer

Published with identifying details removed to protect the writer from possible retaliation.

Justice Notes is an ongoing series examining incarceration, rehabilitation, storytelling, institutional power, and the lives that exist behind prison walls.

Prison Camp: Daily Life

John DiMenna — Sun, 10 May 2026 22:00:52 GMT

Following are more depictions of daily prison life which I’ve been publishing for the past few weeks. Prison strips life down to routines and fragments. These excerpts from my essay, Becoming an Inmate, reflect some of the small worlds that emerge inside a federal prison camp.

Recreation

I walked the track mostly. The main prison in the foreground: its long, looming profile, the barbed wire surrounding it, and the cars in the huge parking lot flashing light on nice days, the crumbling structure of the recreation area in its foothills, decaying like the camp’s interior. There was a field in the middle of the track, overgrown, and a baseball field, a fallow wreck of dirt. But for the inmates, it’s still an escape of sorts, an amenity even. The track, reduced to a crumbling path of ash and mud, remains every inmate’s daily prayer. In any weather, solo, in pairs, groups even, running, walking (most popular), guys in the dog program walking their dogs, picking up their poop along the way and even once in a while, this one inmate walking with a guitar playing and composing and always, Crazy Lou with his wild routine of stopping every fifty feet or so, leaning to the right and left and spitting.

There was some basketball play. Less than I thought. The court not bad. No one very good. Sometimes 20 or more back-and-forths before a basket. It looked like form over substance. Baseball the same. Except the Spanish guys liked to challenge a team of ‘others.’ Balls through the wickets, ground ball home runs, outfielders dashing in and dashing out, plenty of arguments and shouting. Bocci had a following, as did horseshoes. Same guys at handball. And the hardwood, dented, damaged picnic tables that guys used to exercise on: pushups, sit-ups, and the like. Some creative moves I couldn’t figure out. The workout trailer had two treadmills and an aerobic machine, vintage 1955. Barbells are not allowed in federal prisons. Fear by the staff, I’m told.

In the early days, I walked with Steve for a few months before he departed. After, I walked alone, talking to myself, as had become my way with just my radio most of the time. There was a Native American area. A teepee and all. Always some fires burning there. Steve said the guys were there mainly to smoke. A rag-tag fence of fragile planks surrounds the teepee. A sign in front: “Only Native Americans allowed.” No one there looked like an Indian.

Entertainment

The time before the final count was the dreaded hour. The longest hours of every day. Ironic that the war stories got me through. Its own separate trauma. You’d think in prison, something else would carry you. Maybe it was just me.

Every night at seven. It was called adult education, which assured a small crowd. Only a few as desperate as me. I couldn’t get enough of it. Ken Burns and his wars: The Civil War, World War II, and finally Vietnam, the war of my time and place. But all the same. Pillage and dying.

In Nam, it was charging and taking hills, only to withdraw because there was nothing there. So they’d retreat, leaving only remnants of dead trees and Vietnamese bodies (they’d take their own dead) or invading villages and only old couples and children, the enemy, but kill them just the same, and endless back and forth, capturing and retreating with no tangible outcomes, only continual battles that provided neither victory nor consequence. Only the next day, more fighting and dying assured.

And then we watched the Civil War, the worst kind of dying: lying wounded in open fields, limbs turning gangrene, or worse, some unskilled soldier sawing off your leg with no anesthesia, or bludgeoned and bleeding slowly to death. And the battles: lines of men charging at each other in open fields, shooting at each other point-blank until more of the other side would fall, retreat, and then do it again in an hour or the next day. After a while, it’s hard to believe they remembered what they were fighting for.

World War II at least brought some context. But still brutal, more dying and trauma. I’d leave those meetings in a daze. The interviews, the words of all those dying men, wouldn’t leave me. But I’d go back every night. Looked forward to it. They’re still there. It was the only prescription for me.

I’m in prison, looking for answers. And all I found was war and death. A cleansing, somehow. I haven’t figured out what that says about me. But it’s probably not good.

Reading

Mostly old news from the major journals: WSJ, NY Times, Post, all the Boston papers. Guys pass them to their friends. A kind of pecking order emerges. All the issues are late. At first, you care. Important in the beginning. News back home and the like. Eventually, it’s less and less. After a while, I stopped reading them. My eyesight’s fading didn’t help.

In the library, I found New England papers from towns I never heard of. I read their obituaries, the best place to discover a world. Lives that read like 1955, some other America than the one I know. Surprising comfort from those. You grasp at straws in prison.

My daughter sent me The New Yorker. For books, I’d scour the computer room’s selections for large-print volumes. Not a great collection. A lot of Stephen King and James Patterson. I found Elena Ferrante surprisingly. Must have been somebody before I arrived. No one I met would read that. The library was mostly like the back of CVS. And nothing in any order. Once an inmate organized them. But a CO on a rampage one morning dumped all the books on the floor, and that was that.

My sister sent me some large print I could read. It was a battle. And then when I could find something with print large enough to read. It would be too cold to stay in my bunk and read. Nothing’s easy in prison.

Television

The remote was everything. Ralph controlled it in the big room. It moved around in the kitchen. My bunkie Mike started a war over that one. Put him in the SHU eventually. I never went near it. Watched it less and less and missed it less and less.

Only my radio, after lights out, huddled in my bunk, earphones glued to my ears, blocking the sounds of the dorm and the Spanish guys praying, provided the solace I craved.

Games

The game room was part of the dorm. Plastic tables, all beaten up and cracked. No chairs. Inmates would have to bring the chairs from their bunks. It was a noisy place at night. Lots of shouting, arguing, laughing too, but mostly shouting.

In my first weeks at camp, my bunk was right next to that room. An inmate named Outlaw (his real name) played poker every night and fought with somebody every night. Seemed like he would jump up at the end of every hand, throw down his cards, and “Mother fuck” everyone in the room. And he was loud and scary. He was gone early after I arrived. Guys told me he wasn’t a bad guy. Glad I never had to find out.

Cards and chess were the favored games. Poker games most nights. A lot of gambling, mostly for commissary items. A poker elimination game the most popular. Ten, twelve guys playing poker. The last two would share the pot. That was always a noisy game. Lots of laughing, kibitzing, and arguing. The older white guys played gin or pinochle. No Bridge at Devens. At least I never saw it.

There was a lot of chess. Two guys, especially, played almost every day. A former white-collar doctor, indicted for prescription violations, and a black street guy who looked like Richard Pryor had a lot of his personality as well. They went back and forth, their games loud and contentious. Despite that, they bunked together. Couldn’t have been a more unlikely pair.

I liked Picket. Couldn’t stand the doctor. A weird guy. He stole several quarts of milk every morning at breakfast. (Who does that?) He was serving twenty years. Who’s to know what that does to you?

Up Next on White Collar Journal:

Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform

Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections

Sunday (Prison Camp): More Stories from prison

If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.

Thank you for reading White-Collar Journal. Subscribing is free, and I hope you’ll continue with me as I explore stories of incarceration, justice, and redemption.

Notes from Exile: Barbed Wire

John DiMenna — Thu, 07 May 2026 22:01:49 GMT

Prison camps represent the lowest form of security in the federal prison system. No cells. No towering walls. Often no fences around the camp itself. But at the camp where I served my sentence, a main prison sat directly beside us, wrapped in endless coils of razor wire that caught the sun by day and the floodlights by night. Threats of relocation there was a frightening prospect that fostered good behavior at the camp.

Every day I walked the outdoor track and looked at it. This journal entry came from those walks.

BARBED WIRE

Those gnarled circles flash their steel teeth day and night,
more frightening beneath the floodlights,
their true fierceness revealed.

In daylight they merge with sky and sunlight
and we forget for a moment.
Just a fence.

But early evening, when the lights come on,
those circles flash bright their unmistakable message:

you are a prisoner.
We are here to hurt you.
And you are not getting out.

Don’t even think about it.

Justice Notes: The Prison Journalism Project

John DiMenna — Wed, 06 May 2026 22:58:26 GMT

This week, Justice Notes is featuring the work of an incarcerated writer published through the Prison Journalism Project, an organization dedicated to training incarcerated people to become journalists and amplifying reporting from inside America’s prisons.

Most public conversations about incarceration happen without the voices of the people living through it. Prison Journalism Project is working to change that — creating a national network of incarcerated writers who document prison life, examine the criminal legal system from the inside, and contribute firsthand perspectives that are too often absent from public debate.

The essay below, by John Lennon, reflects something readers rarely encounter: thoughtful, disciplined writing emerging from within prison walls. It is not simply commentary about incarceration. It is evidence that intellectual life, personal growth, and civic engagement continue even inside institutions designed around punishment and separation.

At Justice Notes, we believe meaningful reform requires listening to people closest to the system itself. We’re honored to share this work with our readers.

Reprinted with permission from The Prison Journalism Project.

Guest Essay by John Lennon: Writing Well From Inside Prison

I had just finished a deep-dive interview and was daydreaming in my cell, listening to Halsey on my tablet through Audio Technica headphones. I was pacing and thinking about the material. I tend to get emotional when I think about my subjects because I often relate to their struggle — externally, internally — to overcome the complications of this prison life.

That’s empathy. That’s what journalism has taught me.

I imagine what the story will look like in the slicks (glossy magazines), how the illustration or photography will pop in the well — the splashy two-page spreads in the back of magazines. I see “the deck,” the few lines that tease the story. Those are feature stories, the pinnacle of print journalism. That’s what I do. From my cell.

I’ve been locked up nearly 19 years now. Back in 2010, I started learning how to write in an Attica creative writing workshop taught by Doran Larson, a volunteer English professor. A handful of prisoners attended once a month. Spotting a great opportunity is like seeing a great story — you’re not going to have a voice whispering in your ear telling you “this is it.”

I was cocky, hardly Larson’s favorite, but I hung on to his every word and never missed a class. The workshop was geared toward published work, and a few of my first essays were rigorously critiqued in class before I mailed them to magazines, and they were published. I developed my signature style: journalism meshed with memoir.

Today I’m a contributing editor for Esquire and a contributing writer for The Marshall Project. Recently I was asked to be an advisor for the Prison Journalism Project.

In this essay I’ll describe my writing process and how I consider story. I’m writing mostly to the aspiring prison writer and journalist. We’ve partnered with several publications with the hope that this piece will find its way inside.

As a feature magazine writer, I substitute the who, what, where, when and why that a traditional reporter uses in a news story with character, theme, plot, scenes, chronology and motive. In “This Place is Crazy,” a story that appeared in the 2018 summer issue of Esquire, I wrote about Joe Cardo, who suffered from schizoaffective disorder and used to pick up cigarette clips in the Attica yard. I observed him and nestled next to him.

When he told me his story, it reminded me of my brother Eugene’s struggle with mental illness, and so I wove those memories through the story. The piece wound up having three narratives — Joe’s, Eugene’s and mine. It took two years of restructuring and rewriting, with help from a great editor. The story’s peg, which is journalism lingo for a topic that is relevant in society, was this: Ten out of every eleven psychiatric patients housed by the government are incarcerated. Ground the specific in the general. That’s the key.

According to Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair’s former editor in chief, the best magazine stories have these elements: access, narrative, disclosure, and — always — conflict. When you think about it, who’s got better access to story than the prisoner? I mean, we live among some of society’s most colorful characters.

Other journalists parachute into prisons, conduct interviews, and then leave. They can’t truly know the characters they interview or the prison culture. They don’t breathe the air, eat the food, feel the tension. They aren’t affected by prison politics and violence and monotony. The scenes they write are almost all reconstructed instead of witnessed firsthand, which produces some of the best writing. My access has been my edge.

Narrative is simply how you set up the chronology of events. Thing is, there’s nothing simple about it. Knowing where to put scenes and how to keep the tension and when to break for digressions is tricky.

If you want to learn how to spin a yarn, I’d say you have to always analyze the stories you consume — a movie, an NPR segment, a magazine article. Structurally, feature pieces in magazines have a lot going on. I reverse engineer them. I underline, write in the margins, bracket the opening hooks, the nut grafs (the core premise of the article), the exposition on history of the issue to which the stories are pegged, the backstories on the protagonist, then back to the rising action scenes.

Not every story has all these elements. The legendary writer John McPhee says that structure is not a template. I read the pieces front to back, back to front. “The art exists purely in the arrangement of the words,” says Philip Gerard, a writer and professor at University of North Carolina Wilmington.

A bit about disclosure and conflict. “This Place is Crazy” was a personal story with characters, scenes and action. After the opening scene in the yard, where I introduce Joe Cardo and explain his situation, I digress and blend in important information on the history: “By locking up people with psychiatric diagnoses, we’ve boomeranged back to the way things were done in antebellum America.” Then I go on for a bit about the history. That’s disclosure: teaching the reader. Most people prefer to learn while being told a good story. Magazines do that well.

There’s a measure of conflict every time an incarcerated person (especially one like me, convicted of murder) publishes in a national magazine. But I’m a big believer in telling the reader why you’re in prison, even if it has nothing to do with the story. Guys that write stories for, say, San Quentin News don’t necessarily need to confront this, because it’s a prison newspaper and readers know the context.

Read the full article here: Writing Well From Inside Prison