White-Collar Journal

Prison Camp: Daily Life

John DiMenna — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 23:01:51 GMT

Another selection from Prisoner’s Lament, forthcoming in a second edition from Moonstone Press.

HELL FREEZES OVER

I never thought that Hell would be freezing, not fire but ice the torture of preference for the Bureau of Prisons so you slept in overcoats and winter hats and shivering for hours tossing and turning your way to warmth and just when you managed to somehow find sleep there was the three am count and the guard’s flashlight in your bunk and then another hour to try and morph your shaking into sleep and then the alarm goes off at five am and it’s morning and time to get up in the meat locker and you ask the guard about the heat and he tells you to “fuck off because all you guys are a pain in the ass, who’s hot, who’s cold” and then you go to work in the kitchen washing dishes and scrubbing pans but at least it’s warm for five hours; but you finish up and you go back to your bunk exhausted but still cold, colder even and ten minutes later you’re shivering again.

A different kind of hell.

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.

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.

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Notes from Exile: On Existentialism

John DiMenna — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:01:47 GMT

I discovered this poem while I was in prison. I don’t remember exactly where I found it, but I remember how deeply it resonated with me. Reading it again, years later, it still does.

When I was in college, I was drawn to the existentialist writers, particularly the notion that “existence precedes essence, ” that we become who we are through the choices we make.

Buckley’s poem brought me back to those ideas. It was a sobering realization while serving a prison sentence, confronting the consequences of my own choices.

To Luis Omar Salinas in Oblivion

Christopher Buckley

We bet high and slept in the streets,
sure the sky was holding something back,
drove late down Wishon to the market
you christened Filthy Foods, finished with
the iron ore of despair. We had a fistful
of Ones to buy chicherones and a cheap 12-pack
of beer to keep us company under the bare arms
of the apricot where we found fault in the heavens,
2 bits left to toss into the bucket of fate. . . .
With our compadre’s collie dog we howled
at a moon rising from the black gullet of space,
put on our souls, buttoned our coats, and,
as your metaphors flared like meteors
across the forehead of the night, we took turns
transcribing them with a ballpoint by the light
of twigs burning in the grill—text, subtext, ash,
salt of a life streaming away.

Amigo, now
I have a savings account that won’t save me
from anything. I have 15 fountain pens
and not much time to use them before
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow calls to me
from the forest primeval. There’s no trouble
left for me to get into anymore. We’re dying
tonight of everything—no alibi for the missing
laces in my shoes, my shirt without a sleeve
of hope, the dust leaking from my cuffs.
And even if I shout the 7 syllables of your name
into the dark all I can see are the scrambled
backbones of the Milky Way . . . I might as well
go on down the sidewalk, wondering where,
if anywhere, we’re headed, as it becomes clear
that nothing’s written in the stars.

Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 1, April 2022.

Justice Notes: Silence is Not an Option

John DiMenna — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 22:01:57 GMT

Silence Is Not an Option

For today’s Justice Notes, I’m sharing excerpts from recent correspondence with an incarcerated writer whom I’ve been mentoring through PEN America’s writing program.

I’ve written often about the cruelty of incarceration, the isolation, the humiliation, and the daily struggle to preserve some sense of dignity. But those accounts are largely drawn from my own experience, now several years behind me.

This correspondence is different. It comes from someone still incarcerated, struggling not only with the conditions of confinement but with the difficulty of continuing to write under those circumstances.

I’ve withheld his name and identifying details to protect his privacy. His account of the conditions at his institution is his own, but it offers a troubling reminder of what incarceration can mean for those still living through it.

From an Incarcerated Writer

I have been writing in fits and starts. I now know that I can only write when I have something I want to express. I guess it’s a good and bad thing.

I am dealing with blatant abuses by those in authority at this moment and am deciding on an appropriate medium through which to express it, maybe a short novel or exposé piece or both.

My drive to write is low right now though because I feel as if I cannot dedicate sufficient attention to it and my overall well-being simultaneously.

I have to be constantly alert and aware of the predatory elements who seem to enjoy provoking inmates, luring them off their paths and into confrontations which always lead to the inmates being found to be at fault.

So that’s where I am right now. Hopefully, I will be able to produce something that will be worthy of the next contest.

I’m now housed at a very oppressive institution which seems to thrive off of a deeply entrenched culture of abuse towards inmates and wanton violence that seems sanctioned by the administration.

So my drive to write has been hampered. I intend to bring attention to this issue as it is very rampant and occurs on a daily basis.

Keep me in your prayers as I’m truly bothered by what we are being subjected to.

I have some ideas about how we may address this in novel or short story form, at least for my own sanity’s sake.

Silence is not an option.

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 — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:05:20 GMT

Moonstone Press will shortly publish a second edition of A Different Kind of Hell, my collection of prison journal entries, fragments, and reflections written during incarceration and the period following my release. I've been sharing selections from the book in Prison Camp over the past few weeks. The following is the introduction to the new edition.

INTRODUCTION

Confessional memoir has become a pejorative. Something for knaves and weak hearts. But what else would you write about, entering prison in the twilight of your career, having gone bizarrely rogue and accused of the largest financial fraud in the history of Connecticut.

A writer, more by circumstance than aspiration, the enclosed manuscript was mostly written in prison and the rest in a cocoon after my release where I reside, still searching in my own dark world for the genesis of my criminality, that perhaps was lurking from the day I stole $10 from my grandmother’s purse at the age of thirteen.

Traditional narrative, streams, vignettes, journal entries, essays, poems, prose poems, scenes, log/verse and an interview with myself comprise this hybrid chronicle of my fall from grace. A long-form narrative just didn’t resonate with me. That’s kind of what prison does to you. Everything’s a departure in prison.

I’d been running from my sins since kindergarten. They finally caught up with me at age seventy-six, and I was sentenced to eighty-five months in prison for two counts of wire fraud. The presiding Judge told me I was disconnected from humanity and all things that make life meaningful and worthwhile. I had a challenging life ahead, he said.

When I entered prison, the disconnect from humanity was complete. A muddled brotherhood was waiting for me. I lived among one hundred inmates. More wilderness than community. There is nothing more solitary than living among the exiled.

I entered prison a ghost and returned an apparition.

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.

Prison Camp: Daily Life

John DiMenna — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:49 GMT

INTRODUCTION

I entered prison a ghost and returned an apparition.

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.

Prison Camp: Daily Life

John DiMenna — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 22:01:38 GMT

INTRODUCTION

I entered prison a ghost and returned an apparition.

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: Nate

John DiMenna — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 22:00:58 GMT

I'm continuing with entries from my prison journal about my children and grandchildren. Last week was Alice. This week, her brother Nate.

NATE

Nathan—Nate. I loved you long before I knew
your name. And loved you more the day I heard it:
Nathan—No Nate said my son; maybe after seeing
the perfect sparkle of those blue pools, or maybe
it was the lurking rascal framed in your sly smile,
seemingly as permanent as a portrait.
You seemed to know me long before you
called me Papa. No one had to introduce
us, we know each other long before we’re
born.

Justice Notes: Post Script

John DiMenna — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 22:29:32 GMT

I recently came across this piece, written about a year after my release from prison, while I was still under home incarceration in Vero Beach. I was attempting to establish a new life, writing every day, and struggling to come to terms with the one I had left behind. Reading it now, I’m struck by how uncertain I was about what lay ahead.

I’ve left it largely as I wrote it then.

POST SCRIPT—VERO BEACH

I’m told that I’m not remorseful enough. It’s painful to hear that. I resist it. If I’m honest with myself, that’s probably true. But I’m getting over it. In time I will be. I’m an author now. Who knows how accomplished. It’s a long road to ten thousand hours at my age. I read, write five to six hours a day. Sometimes in the morning sometimes in the afternoon. My goal is 300 good words a day. Not easy for me; good ones that is. It’s like digging in hardpan.

I’ve gotten in the habit of naps every day. Before or after a session. Florida summer cools down in the afternoon. It’s close and humid when I go out on the porch. After a while there is a breeze that cools slowly and a drowse just overtakes me. The best sleep of all. I don’t think I ever dream on those afternoons, none of the frightening reels that roll at bedtime. Waking from them is the best part of my life now. It is the only time when I feel good without guilt which is surprising because napping was always a guilty pleasure during my old life.

Maybe because it’s in between worlds and you’re not sure if you’re alive, asleep or in another world, in fact have no idea where you are or what you did or who you are or if you have a history or if you were just born at that moment. No better feeling than those first moments waking from a nap. Surprisingly, it was the same when I was in prison when I was able to sneak a nap after work in the kitchen. Stolen moments. Maybe that’s it. Moments of pure existing and unknowing of anything. Just alive in the world.

Maybe that’s how dogs feel all the time or cows. Cows were my favorite animal. If I could be an animal, I’d choose a cow. Grazing in the outdoors every day, the world literally a feast of green and scent of fertile fields, plenty of company and no ideas to worry about. Anyway, that’s my life now, grazing, myopic, just coasting the rest of the way, as clueless as possible, bracing for the end.

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, 18 Oct 2026 22:01:35 GMT

Continuing with selections from A DIFFERENT KIND OF HELL, the forthcoming second edition from Moonstone Press, I’ve returned to another early entry from my prison journal. Like much of my writing during those first days, it was written in a stream-of-consciousness style, attempting to capture the confusion and disorientation of entering prison.

HANDCUFFS

are more complicated than you think because there is the pull around and I wasn’t even sure what the guard wanted me to do and when I finally figured it out he was already angry at me and he finally got the first cuff on my right wrist but was struggling to get the other one on and I moved my arms closer to make it easier for him but that didn’t work and just seemed to make it harder for him and he got even angrier and the first cuff was already bruising and cutting into my right wrist and I couldn’t help but move it now to make it more comfortable for me which really made him angry and so there was more pulling of my arms and finally he turned me back around and shouted at me to stop fucking this up and then he turned me around and then I didn’t know what I was doing but making all sorts of movements and then no movement and finally he got both cuffs on and I could feel them squeezing and the left one was cutting into my wrist and he started to drag me somewhere but I had no idea where we were going and I didn’t dare move my wrists anymore and just kept trying to keep up with him and those cuffs digging in and just cutting me all the more and I realized that I had a long way to go to figure out prison.

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: Alice

John DiMenna — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:01:30 GMT

Having shared entries from my prison journal about each of my children, I thought I'd continue with a few about my grandchildren. This one is about Alice, who was seven years old at the time.

ALICE

Do you know I
love you?
I’d say to my
granddaughter.

A knowing shy smile
on that beautiful
face.
“Of course I do”
she’d say.

Is there anything purer
than the innocence
of a seven-year-old?

And how am I to come
to terms with
that.
The reckoning of my
scandal
and the perfection
of that
smile.

Justice Notes: Impostor Syndrome

John DiMenna — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 22:01:24 GMT

I’ve written often about the difficulties of rebuilding a life after incarceration. But there is another, less visible burden that accompanies the formerly incarcerated, even after they’ve regained some measure of acceptance in their communities. I’ve been thinking about that lately, and about the persistent fear of having one’s past unexpectedly resurface.

THE IMPOSTOR

The word impostor is derived from the Latin word imponere, which means “to deceive” or “to place upon.” My mother believed that Latin was the core derivation of English and required all of her children to take at least three years of it in high school. She would demonstrate this whenever the opportunity arose, leaving the dinner table only to return a short while later, carrying her thick, beaten-up Webster dictionary, almost always finding the Latin root of whatever word one of us had used incorrectly.

I’m not sure she would have been proud of my recent search for the derivation of impostor. She would have been appalled had she been alive when I was sentenced to federal prison for financial malfeasance. Malfeasance, derived from the Latin word malefacere, which means “to do wrong.”

Then there is the concept of impostor syndrome, a psychological phenomenon where high-achieving individuals experience internal feelings of being a fraud. People with this syndrome fear being exposed as incompetent, despite having proven qualifications and success. I experienced that during the heady days of my business career. Before the fall and my incarceration.

Then, for the formerly incarcerated seeking redemption and community forgiveness, there is another kind of impostor syndrome. The fear that no matter what good works, community service, restitution, apologies, or restoration, their history in the criminal justice system remains a hair’s breadth from exposure at the least expected moment. The fear that their criminal justice history resurfaces at the wrong time, just when that history has been relegated to the forgotten past and is no longer a factor in their relationship with their community. So that every one of us carries at all times a subconscious dread of exposure that will derail our hard-earned communal forgiveness.

As a result, we deliberate (deliberare, “to weigh”) over every potential social interaction and vacillate (vacillare, “to waver”) before committing to even the most worthwhile community projects. The prospect of our “outing” is always a factor in every one of these decisions. And, unfortunately, that feeling never goes away, and we live in constant trepidation: trepidation, “a feeling of fear, alarm, or agitation about something that may happen,” derived from the Latin trepidare, “to tremble.”

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, 11 Oct 2026 22:01:41 GMT

Having completed the portraits from A Muddled Brotherhood, I thought I’d return to some of my earliest prison writing.

Moonstone Press will shortly publish a second edition of A Different Kind of Hell, a collection of fragments from my prison journal. I wrote many of these pieces in a kind of stream-of-consciousness prose, often without punctuation or conventional sentence structure, attempting to capture the disorientation and unreality of incarceration as I experienced it.

The following describes my arrival at the federal prison in Devens, Massachusetts, where I was unexpectedly placed in solitary confinement for three days before being transferred to the prison camp.

WELCOME TO PRISON

I thought I was ready for prison but not even close and maybe because I could self-surrender and the false comfort of that and my lawyer telling me all along that everything would be all right but never kept working out all right and when I finally arrived and the door closed behind me and I was standing alone in the stark waiting room with overwhelming despair and panic as one man and then another man checked me in and then another man told me to go to another room and then another man told me to strip and bend over and put on some clothes and then another man told me to go into another room and a pretty but scruffy girl in a Red Sox hat came in to the room and told me that prison is not like TV and that I had to go to Solitary for three days before I was checked into the camp where I thought I was going but not yet she said which sucks she said but that’s the way it is and then she left the room and another girl came in who was older and heavy set and said she was a psychologist but didn’t look like a doctor and asked me if I wanted to kill myself or kill anyone else and I asked her if anyone answers yes to these questions and she said yes they do and then she left the room and another guy called me out of that room and told me to go into another room with a large glass panel in the front with a dirty stainless steel toilet in it and I waited there thinking that was the room I would be in for three days but after a while another man came in who didn’t speak English very well and kept motioning me to do something but I didn’t understand so he pulled me up and I finally understood that he wanted me to turn around and he handcuffed me and took me up a staircase and then outside where a long block building loomed and we walked along a stone path with barbed wire along the path until we stood at a steel door that looked like it never opened but then it did suddenly and we were inside a dark hallway with a crowd of men in orange jump suits and guards with tattoos and long beards who looked like inmates shouting at one another and all the inmates in cuffs like me and one guard who seemed like the one in charge who shouted to the guy holding me to take me into another room where they uncuffed me but told me to strip again and then gave me an orange jump suit to ‘put this on ass hole’ and then another guard with a very long beard like the baseball players wear nowadays took me down a narrow hall with steel doors on both sides and tiny windows in each door and frightening faces staring out until somewhere in the middle of this hallway they opened one of the doors and pushed me in and I heard the steel door slam and the sound of keys jiggling as he walked away and I looked around at the dirty slimy cell and the filthy toilet and dirtier shower stall and the steel bed and a ceiling twenty feet above your head with a fan blowing cold air right in your face and I heard the guard shout as he walked away “Welcome to prison.”

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: Brian

John DiMenna — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 22:01:21 GMT

Over these past weeks, I've been sharing entries from my prison journal about each of my children. They are fragments of memory, written during a time when I was struggling with the consequences of my incarceration and what it meant for my family. This final entry is about Brian, our youngest.

BRIAN

So unprepared for
him;
we didn’t even have
a name, or a
room.

His little bassinet
without a
place;
next to our bed
in those early
days.

He squeezed my finger
in his little
palm;
eyes wide and smiley
face.

I should have known then—
this special
one.

Justice Notes: Prison Without Bars

John DiMenna — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 23:41:07 GMT

I was recently reviewing entries from Prisoner’s Lament, one of the earliest versions of my prison memoir, when I came across excerpts from the remarks of the federal Judge who sentenced me to eighty-five months in prison.

I’ve referred to his comments many times in my writing, particularly his description of the prison I had created for myself long before my incarceration. But rereading his words now, years later, I was struck by how much of what he said continues to resonate.

The following are excerpts from his sentencing remarks.

A Prison Without Bars

A sentence here is preceded by another sentence, the one that you have given yourself in your mind and perhaps even in your soul. There are no bars visible in that prison, but it is a prison nonetheless.

In this prison, one of the mind, for some reason, I don’t know, you did not believe you could have made better life choices or decisions without making the choices you made…

And then once the mind does not believe a better life is possible, your soul too often follows.

Your soul is that part of you that even when your mind cannot conceive of a better life, your soul says that you may not be able to think of a better life, but your life surely will be worse if you violate the law.

Your soul is that part of you that even when your mind can conceive of a fraud, your soul will not let you go through with it because the pain caused to the people who will be hurt may be more than any of them can bear, or to disappoint, abandon even, those who you love the most, your wife of 46 years, your children, or the many other family members who have looked to you as the family patriarch, particularly after the passing of your own father.

An prisoned soul locked away, and therefore not fully connected to humanity, is the best way to describe someone who can lie directly to people who they have known for years…

Yes, I understand that throughout the course of your life you have done good and even wonderful things for many people, and cared for your family.

[...]

Of course all of these good things said about you can still be true and you can still commit reprehensible acts against others.

Your various good deeds are not for naught because you have family and friends who still love you, one of life’s greatest deeds.

And, indeed, significantly, given her comments here, if you needed someone to help pull you out of a mental and spiritual prison that led you to where you are today, you need not look too much beyond your own daughter, Meredith, whose comments on your behalf today were forthright, resolute and compassionate.

And so sometimes when you spend a life trying to fix things for others, it is worth stopping and letting others fix things for you.

Your daughter, and I suspect all of your children, as well as your wife and friends, would have helped fill that mental and spiritual void you were feeling that placed you in the mental and spiritual prison you were in, and may still be in, that resulted in these crimes.

But all of these deeds are significantly and sufficiently diminished in their overall value because your generosity and caring on the one hand has been coupled with greed and deceit on the other.

So the more you remain in that mental and spiritual prison—and you have been in it for far too long—the more you become disconnected to what makes life meaningful and worthwhile, not just family, but all of those who you have had the chance to come across in your life.

[...]

So today the real question is really not—though it’s significant—what sentence I will give you, but what sentence will you give yourself.

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, 04 Oct 2026 22:02:51 GMT

Last week, I published the introduction to A Muddled Brotherhood, the collection of portraits I’ve been sharing here over these past months. This week, I thought I would complete the circle with the Epilogue, written several years after my release from prison.

EPILOGUE

Gratefully, I received a reprieve due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was released after serving only eighteen months of my sentence. But I was confined to home incarceration for three years, the most restrictive form of house arrest.

The moment of release is a kind of fool’s gold. A conviction to make amends, start over, 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, no matter its locale or facility.

Home incarceration is a more internal form of isolation, but I used the time to complete these profiles as a requiem for this exiled incarcerated class and for all of the inmates I lived with, including the guards, who are as incarcerated, in some ways, as much as the rest of us.

It’s been four years since my release. Some equilibrium has been restored, but the surprise meeting with a past associate, the uncomfortable encounter, the unanswerable question is never ending.

I’m still disconnected from humanity, and I haven’t reached out to any of my former inmates. I’m not sure why that is. But that’s what prison does to you, it takes everything you came in with and everything you left behind. I still think about them, many of them are probably in those dreams I have every night that I can’t remember in the morning.

I’m uncomfortable around good people. The self-loathing, the residual guilt that the guards instilled in us every minute of incarceration, lingers long after the arrival home.

I’m connected to a group of former white-collar felons—a kind of AA confessional for the formerly incarcerated. I’m the worst kind of member, still wallowing in my own brokenness, and reluctant to share and truly connect with their honest and open confessions.

But I think I know what makes life meaningful and worthwhile. I got that much out of prison. I’m not sure I didn’t know it before.

My most vivid memory at Devens is the cemetery alongside the track, that I passed every day during my daily walk. An eerie tableau of perfect rows of pure white crosses. It was rumored that several former inmates were buried there and I often contemplated the prospect of being buried there alongside of them.

It always reminded me of conversations with my wife who told me she wants to be cremated, and her ashes spread over the little river near our first house on a beautiful pristine hill. But that was before we knew anything, as it was the beginning of our lives, really, and of course we weren’t aware of it as you never are when you’re young marrieds and the last thing you’re thinking about is how you want to be buried.

But after all my time at Devens, passing those graves of inmates I never met, but part of my brotherhood just the same, I decided that I don’t want to be ashes and spread anywhere. I want to be put in a box and know the weight of me will be felt by some unknowns who struggle lowering me down there, next to the other buried inmates I had never known. And it doesn’t matter that they don’t know me, but only that they know that there’s somebody in there that was alive once, and I’ll take comfort just knowing that.

But please don’t make me ashes and spread me anywhere because no matter where you spread them it’s really nowhere and I was here once and at least I’ll know that there’s a place that says I was here no matter what I was or wasn’t.

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: Tom

John DiMenna — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 22:01:29 GMT

I’ve been publishing entries from my prison journal about each of my children and the painful recognition of what my incarceration meant for them. Meredith came first, then Jay. This one is about our third child, Tom.

TOM

His arrival was
late,

but such a storm
he was.

His mother almost
lost.

Boy, the nurses
called him,

and later Bulldog
by his
friends.

I just remember
the night he
kept on
crying.

“Why Dad?” he asked,
and kept on
asking.

I had no answer,

and he kept on
crying.

Justice Notes: Acceptance

John DiMenna — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 22:02:10 GMT

This week’s Justice Note is a personal reflection on aging, incarceration, and the complicated meaning of moving forward.

ACCEPTANCE

I’ve been drifting away from my White-Collar Support Group. Not sure why that is. Maybe it’s a recent birthday, getting so close to the end now that a year from now is more a hope than an expectation. So I can’t relate anymore to talk of futures, recoveries, and rebuildings. Which makes me a poor colleague for those who can be hopeful and realistically plan for years to come.

At my stage, what remains are the lost careers, fractured relationships, financial struggles, and the embarrassment of explaining who we are now and what happened to who we used to be. Their tales of moving forward represent an optimism I no longer possess.

Maybe I’m in what is called the last stage of grief. Incarceration is a form of grief. The loss—your own lost life—forever in the background. I still can’t ignore the past. I keep retracing the tipping points and longing for the best of that time. Before the fall, before the feds, and before the trauma that followed.

A different kind of acceptance.

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, 27 Sep 2026 22:00:50 GMT

Over these past months, I’ve published many of the portraits from A Muddled Brotherhood, my collection of the inmates and guards who remain part of my memory of prison. I thought I would return this week to the introduction I originally wrote for the collection.

A MUDDLED BROTHERHOOD

On certain days, prison feels like afterlife, other days, like a typical work day, and most days a bad dream enduring the slow torture of meaningless, menial tasks. I lived among one hundred other inmates, more wilderness than community. There is nothing more solitary than living among the exiled.

In a crowded courtroom, the presiding Judge—a round Black man with a kind face—asked us to stand. Something deliberative about him, like an uncle you could confide in after failing an exam. Though momentarily reassured, my legs trembled as a group of investors stood behind me, silently pleading for the maximum sentence.

Before sentencing, the Judge delivered a long narrative that was difficult to hear, the acoustics compromised by a high ceiling and a dizzying scent from the rich paneled wood that covered the walls. I could only grasp certain phrases and the last few sentences before he announced his decision. He told me I had “already sentenced myself to a prison without bars,” something about a “prison of my own making,” and that I was not connected to humanity, “disconnected to what makes life meaningful and worthwhile.”

Then, after a short pause, he sentenced me to eighty-five months in prison for two counts of wire fraud. He said I had a challenging life ahead. I was seventy-six years old. With eighty-five months of incarceration looming, my life was over. I left the courtroom in disgrace, leaving my family, company, and investors in financial ruin, the disconnect from humanity complete.

I was assigned to a minimum-security prison camp in a remote area north of Boston, FMC Devens, a former military base where the Spanish Flu began. My pre-prison research advised me to make friends slowly, live under the radar and become a ghost to the staff.

When I arrived at Devens, 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.

The camp facility comprised a long, low-lying industrial building resembling a giant storage shed with a crumbling recreation area adjacent, where our entire lives played out. The camp building was initially constructed to house seventy-two inmates, but by the time I arrived, it housed one hundred and twenty-eight, all cramped into tiny cubicles in an open-floor environment of approximately ten thousand square feet.

Decay was pervasive there. Mold in the showers, broken urinals and sinks, frayed sheets, stained blankets, dented lockers, a foul smell in the bathrooms and a mossy film everywhere. The dorm for inmates was a maze of dark corridors and cubicles that was more barracks than dorm. From a bird’s eye view, it resembled an experiment for mice.

The pods were eight by seven feet, six feet high and had no privacy. Each cubicle housed two inmates with a bunk bed, two low-lying lockers, two plastic chairs and a narrow drawer that fit under the bunks. Every surface was hard: cinder block walls, plastic chairs, steel beds and concrete floors.

Over time, after the period of adjustment is over and a routine is established, each inmate comes to terms with the frightening prospect that this is home.

The cubicles morph into neighborhoods, tribes form and inmates move next to theirs. It’s inevitable, I guess. I made up the names based on my New York City roots: Northern Boulevard (as in Queens, NY; the only corridor of mixed identities), Spanish Harlem (the Hispanic drug dealers from Puerto Rico), Harlem (the young Black gang members), Jamaica (several island guys), the Middle East (the Muslim community), Israel (including the Russian Jews), and Park Avenue, where the white guys congregated.

Corridors weave between the sixty-four cubicles and there’s a continual passing in the hallways where each inmate is confronted continually by the repassing. Some inmates looked straight ahead without a word, others employed a slight nod of acknowledgement and some a “what’s up,” without a look, which became the most popular form of passing. I never really figured it out. It was always uncomfortable.

Prison camps are working camps. Everyone’s assigned a job. There were no great options: orderly, maintenance, the kitchen, landscaping, the commissary, the power house and the military base. I chose the kitchen.

I learned to do the washing, the loading, and even operating the long stainless steel washing machine, a frightening apparatus that had to be reassembled every morning and rumored to have taken limbs from prior inmates. By the time I was released, I was the Number One dishwasher.

Guys used to kid me. “DiMenna, you can always get a job now when you’re out.”

Such a distinction.

Actually, I was proud of it. I even got to like it. Something about the tactile there. Can’t explain it. Sometimes, I think it saved me.

Despite the conditions, I embraced a life of contemplation, renewal, and earnest self-reflection. I considered myself to be a person of conscience. Reconciling this with the reality of my crimes and exiled in prison would provide an existential challenge.

I concluded that men can always dream of a new start and redemption but can never extinguish the history of their malfeasance. Overcoming disgrace is a fool’s errand. I could only accept it and try and move forward.

I decided that this was my new community and that these men would form a new circle of life for me and I would embrace them.

Since my early release in 2020, due to Covid-19, 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.

Below are profiles of those inmates who continue to haunt me as I try, like all of them, to reassemble my life after prison.

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: Jay-Bird

John DiMenna — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 22:01:17 GMT

Last week’s Notes From Exile was about my daughter, Meredith. This week, another entry from my prison journal. This one about my oldest son, Jay, and the painful recognition of the impact my incarceration had on my children.

JAY-BIRD

I spoke with my son
yesterday.

Oldest boy,

beautiful boy—

like the song,

only I can’t really remember
it.

But somehow fits.

How beautiful he
was,

prepped and cleaned on his
mother’s chest,

nurses gleaming at
his smooth black
hair.

Elegante my wife
described.

I recall all his travails
from then till
now.

None worse than
this,

my greatest
sin.

Justice Notes: Transitions

John DiMenna — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 22:00:30 GMT

This week’s Justice Notes comes from my White Collar Support Group colleague Stuart Anderson. Stuart writes about the transitions that mark our lives, including those that follow investigation, sentencing, incarceration and release—and the difficulty of understanding what they mean while we are still living through them.

I’m pleased to share his essay here.

TRANSITIONS

Birth. Pulled from the comfort of the womb into cold reality—bright lights, loud noises, naked and alone as we cry in unfamiliar surroundings. Shocking and uncomfortable in the moment. And yet, a new life has begun, with all the possibilities it brings.

The first day of school. The transition to high school. That first heartbreak that felt worse than anything we had ever experienced. Life was over.

But it wasn’t.

Starting a job. Losing a job. Losing someone we love—a father, a grandparent, a sibling. Each marks a transition from what was to what is, at least from where we stand at the time.

Then comes the knock at the door. Federal agents. A target letter.

A world comes to a halt. Panic sets in. But even that is only the beginning: sentencing, self-surrender, prison, release, halfway house, ankle monitors, home confinement, rejected job offers. One transition after another.

Is this the worst? Is this the end of the life I knew?

For a time, it can certainly feel that way.

The hardest part of a transition is that we usually judge it while we are still inside it. We can see clearly what we have lost, but not yet what the change may make possible. We are standing between what was and what comes next, and that uncertainty can make the loss feel permanent.

I had prayed to God to change things for me. I told Him what I wanted. In the end, He did not give me what I wanted. He gave me what I needed: a transition toward something more meaningful and closer to His will.

Perhaps that is the lesson of transitions. We cannot always choose them, and we certainly cannot avoid them. But we can choose what we do when they arrive.

If we listen, remain open, and stop fighting what can no longer be changed, even a painful transition can carry us into the next chapter of our lives.

And the pain we thought would never pass?

That passes too.

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