10 years ofย Giants. Damn. 2015. Back then I was walking laps on the yard at Blackwater withย Jacob Gaulden, my release date was in 2032, my nephew Jude was still rockinโ a bald head with glasses, and I was on an archeological dig in the netherworld of imagination in search of my third novel. You never know what you will unearth when you begin writing. This time I emerged withย On the Shoulders of Giantsย (published Oct. 2016), a book that I hope will still be making the rounds in the US prison system 100 years after Iโm gone. (I recently received a letter from a reader in a facility way up in Elk Grove Montana!) I try not play favorites with my children butย Giantsย will always hold a special place in my heart. To cop the late Pat Conroy for the millionth time, I would lay it at the alter of God and say this is how I found the world you made. 2015 was a difficult year. But things were about to turn around. A life-changingย Supreme Court rulingย was on the horizon and some good people were about to come into my life. Now here we are at the doorstep of freedom. Life is good.
I have an idea. Itโs been tugging at me, whispering to me, gnawing at my subconscious while I lie dreaming on the thin strip of foam that passes for a bed in this Midwestern dungeon. It is a crazy, far-fetched idea that has no business in the mind of a prisoner. There are thousands, if not millions, of people better suited to pursue this cause.
And yet . . .
Like the characters and stories and songs Iโve written over the years, somehow this idea selected me as the medium that might bring it into being. I know better than to argue when the nudging is this insistent. Resistance is futile. Something way bigger than meโa force far more powerful than the solitary raindrop of my limited human experienceโis demanding a hearing. Demanding attention. Demanding to exist.
To run from it is to invite misery into my life. The same misery that haunts any of us when we evade our calling; whether as artists, dads, entrepreneurs, or pilgrims on a spiritual journey. There are consequences to running from destinyโdepression, addiction, physical ailments, even prison. (Take it from an expert on the subject.)
So, what is this idea that has been tugging so furiously at my sleeve? A screenplay perhaps? Maybe a concept album? A lawn service or hurricane cleanup company??? While all these are potential side hustles in the future, the short answer is no. After careful deliberationโand decades of soul-searchingโI am convinced that my next 25 years on Planet Earth would be best spent running a nonprofit. A School of Rock-type program for at-risk teens and foster kids.
If you think I sound crazy, youโre not alone. But before you dismiss this as the delusional and incoherent rambling of a career criminal, let me explain . . .
Music could have saved my life. The guitar specifically. Like most teenagers, I spent a lot of my youth trying to figure out who I was, where I belonged, who my people were. Was I a jock? Maybe I was a surfer. Or a breakdancer. (Remember, this was in the โ80s.) I started tinkering with the guitar in a St. Paul Minnesota group home when I was 15. It almost grabbed me. But by that time, I was already well on my way to embracing an identity that historically has the lowest barrier of entry among all teenage social strata: I was going to be a thug.
We all know how that turned out.
But over the course of a lifetime of incarcerationโfirst from ages 18 to 28, followed by this current stretch that began in 2005โmusic has been a constant companion. Although decades passed without me so much as tuning a guitar, it was still in my bones. I read biographies on musicians and bands and devoured textbooks on music theory. Even when I began writing novels, I did so with the rhythm and cadence of a songwriter. And when I finally hit federal prison last year and was able to check out an old beat-up, nylon-stringed acoustic from the rec office for the first time in over 20 years, it was like reuniting with a childhood friend.
Now I play every day, for as many hours as I can. Iโm pretty good. Even after years of not playing. But I canโt help wondering what might have been. And mourning all that lost time. With a little structure, support, and guidance as a teen, my life might have gone in a completely different direction. I could be writing this essay from an office in Electric Lady Studios right now. Or Nashville, Tennessee.
Thereโs a reason why music is called a โdiscipline.โ Same as painting or literature or ballet or any of the arts. It requires thousands of hours of practice, focus, sacrifice, and delayed gratification. What weโre really doing when we run scales or learn the lead to โHotel Californiaโ is training the neurons in our brains to wire and fire together through repetition. It seems impossible at first. But if we stick with it and fight off peripheral threats to our dream in all their various guises, a huge payoff awaitsโmastery.
Hereโs what I envision: A warehouse-type building subdivided into soundproofed rooms for guitar/bass, drums, keyboard/vocals, and recording/engineering. Classes would be available after school and during the summer. Kids would be referred by the juvenile justice system, foster care networks, and organizations that advocate for the children of incarcerated parents. Classes would be taught by myself, area musicians willing to invest time, and everything YouTube has to offer. The idea would be to get these young people excited about music, provide the instruments and infrastructure, instill discipline through daily practice, generate confidence as skill levels increase, and forge lifelong friendships with other musicians as they grow in the program. Forming bands would be encouraged. Especially since fundraisers with live music would help pay for new equipment. But the endgame would be to change the trajectory of young lives and divert the school-to-prison pipeline that already has such far-reaching effects at every level of society.
I have long planned to give back to the community in some way when I come home. Volunteer work was always going to be my โchurch.โ I just didnโt know what I was going to do. Until now. They say, โIf you do what you love, youโll never work a day in your life.โ This would check every box for me. And I have the right background, the right training, and am fluent in all the areas necessary to make this happen.
So now Iโm up late every night reading about 501(c)s, learning how to draw up business plans and pitch this idea to hypothetical judges, state attorneys, the sheriffโs department, churches, local radio stations, and area philanthropists. Will it be successful? It depends on how you define success. A multiplatinum album? A legion of virtuoso musicians coming out of the Pensacola area? A world tour and sold-out arenas? Maybe. We live in a world of infinite possibilities. But at minimum, Iโm confident that a difference can be made in the lives of some young people who are currently trending in the wrong direction. Thatโs the plan.
In a recentย essay, I posed a question to readers that Iโve been asking myself for the past year. Itโs a question that every American should be asking themselves, regardless of where we get our news. Whether youโre team Hannity or team Maddow, whether your politics align with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton or the ladies ofย The View. Whether you see the president as Captain America or Adolph incarnate; this simple question can serve as a check on the powerful pull of emotional reactivity, herd mentality, and the algorithmic echo chamber. It goes like this:
Am I wrong about Donald Trump?
My goal is to view this administration and its policies with clear eyes, unaffected by the peripheral noise coming from the left or the right. Not an easy endeavor with such a polarizing figure in the center of the storm. But at the 100-day mile marker of this second Trump term, I think Iโve arrived at an answer. Let me provide some backstory first . . .
A little over eight years ago I wrote an essay about Barack Obama leaving office after two terms and how he was going to be a hard act to follow (โA Shining Example,โ Jan. 2017). Full disclosure: I am an Obama acolyte. I started paying attention to politics during his historic 2008 White House run when I was just a couple years into this 20-year prison sentence. I was inspired by his message of hope and change. As a young man who had lost his way, listening to this longshot senator from Illinois riff on everything from kindness to mastery to constitutional law filled me with energy and optimism. He was easily the most gifted orator I had ever heard speak. But it wasnโt just his magisterial flow. It was action too. I wonโt list every triumph in this essay, but one undeniable slam-dunk was his eight straight years of economic growth after inheriting the 2008 crashโan event that cost the world 40% of its wealth. Then, of course, there was the celebrated termination of Public Enemy Number One, Osama Bin Laden. Not that he pulled it off by himself, but still . . . Pretty big deal. On a lighter note, almost 15 years ago, during the birther conspiracy era (when Trump was haranguing him for being an immigrant and demanding he present his birth certificate), President Obama entered a press correspondentsโ dinner pumping his fist and smiling while the band struck up โBorn in the USA.โ A good father, a good husband, a good dude, andโlike the title of that 2017 essay proclaimsโA Shining Example. At least in the opinion of this humble incarcerated scribe. How good of a dude? How shining of an example? Well, in 2016 I sent aย letterย and a couple of my books to the White House from a Florida Panhandle prison and was shocked to receive a response. The president of the United States wrote me back.
In the aforementioned essay I also express hope for the incoming President Trump. Specifically, his business acumen and how it might benefit America. However, I am embarrassed to admit that a couple of days later, in light of a flurry of post-inauguration news stories, I clumsily banged out a somewhat inaccurate and emotionally reactive article called โThe Honeymoon Is Overโ and went on to hammer the president on every corner for the next four years. Many of you who have been reading these posts since the beginning probably remember. Especially those of you who lean Republican and were annoyed by my rants. God bless yโall for sticking around ๐
So . . . long story longer, when Trump was reelected this time, I was committed to not being such a hack, to not making up my mind first and then finding the facts to support my predetermined opinion; but instead listening to both sides, reading everything I could get my hands on, and resisting the temptation to jump to apocalyptic conclusions. For the most part, I have done what I set out to do. Mission accomplished. Kinda.
When I began this essay, my intention was to assess President Trump on all the big issues and his campaign promises at the 100-day markโthe economy, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Iran, immigration, the courts, D.E.I., DOGE, tariffs, Greenland, Canada, China, the culture war stuff . . . But after careful deliberation, I have decided to not issue this report card. There are plenty of smart people that are far more articulate than me with internet access and college degrees and rolodexes full of sources to break down these stories. The good and the bad and the head-scratchers.
You donโt need me for that.
Kindness is my domain. Human connection. Warmth, empathy, redemption, music, books, love, football, family, friendship, laughter, nature, forgiveness . . . Hope. I need to get back to this. Itโs what I want to be writing about.
Am I wrong about Trump? I donโt know. Maybe. His demand that America is getting a raw deal and that the world needs to pay its fair share might benefit the longevity of the empire. But at what cost? Babies dying of HIV in Africa when it could have been prevented for a few extra pennies a day? The evaporation of due process? Copycat authoritarians popping up across the globe? Impoverished immigrants being labeled as murderers and rapists? The fear, the division, the hard-heartedness . . .
Not my thing. And I canโt pretend it is.
Thereโs been a lot of talk over the last quarter century about the ballooning national debt. Especially in GOP circles. โWhat type of legacy are we leaving our children?โ my conservative friends ask. The liberal outcry has more of an environmental bent. โWhat type of planet are we leaving our children?โ Both of these questions have merit. But while we are examining the long-term effects of current policies, we need to take an honest look at the vitriolic rhetoric of our elected leaders as well. All this hate-speak and intolerance. All this vilification of โother.โโ What type of world will our children inherit from us? Regardless of our political preferences, we need to find a way to bring back decency and decorum.
There is no them, only us.
โMay 5, 2025
[This essay is the fifth and final part in the Continental Rift series first posted on March 24, 2025…]
Just saw where the average attention span in the smart phone era has plummeted to 8 seconds. That ranks us humans just below the goldfish. Thanks science! No wonder nobody out there reads books anymore. That being said, I didnโt spend the last five years pouring everything I have into the Miranda Rights series so that it could collect dust in an Amazon warehouse. I need to at least attempt to advocate for my characters. If not me, who?
The following scene takes place at a female Correctional Institution just outside of Ocala, Florida, named Lowell Annex. Itโs the evening of the 2021 NFL Draft, and after snorting a sizeable piece of Suboxone, Miranda McGuire joins her two besties in the dayroomโTasha Pitts, a lifer who once played cornerback for the Pensacola Power (a once-dominant womenโs football team); and Dixie Adams, another lifer whose face is covered in scar tissue. Tasha is hoping that her son Cedric, also a talented corner, is drafted in the early rounds . . .
Miranda was surprised by the number of women who remained in the dayroom to watch the NFL Draft when Dixie got up to change the channel. Besides the handful of studs who made a big show out of watching every sporting eventโand who she suspected were really not as into it as their ostentatious bluster might suggestโthere were more than a few ladies who were obviously football fans.
On the bench behind her, two middle-aged women were engaged in a heated discussion over who the Miami Dolphins would choose with their first-round selection. A few rows back, a belligerent older woman was ranting about how it didnโt matter who the other 31 teams drafted as long as Tom Brady was in Tampa. Even Bad Breath Beth was into it, standing beneath the television and cupping her ears to hear better as the announcers gushed about the arm talent of someone named Lawrence.
โThese are good,โ Dixie mumbled through a mouthful of food. She pointed at the half-eaten burrito in Mirandaโs lap. โYou gonna eat that?โ
โQuit being so damn greedy!โ said Tasha. โYou already ate three.โ
โI ate two,โ she clarified.
โTwo plus all the leftover soup and chips in my bowl.โ
โYou told me to clean it,โ Dixie growled.
The food was delicious. In addition to the standard ramen noodles, spicy refried beans, and Shabang Extreme chips, Tasha had acquired stolen fresh bell peppers and cherry tomatoes from her connection in food service, all boiled in Throkkieโs stinger, topped with ranch dressing and jalapeno cheese, and wrapped in tortilla shells. The entire dayroom smelled like Los Rancheros.
Miranda passed Dixie the remainder of her burrito. She swallowed it in two bites.
Tasha shook her head. โI canโt believe you. You know damn well the girlโs trying to get her strength back after quitting that old nasty drug.โ
Dixie looked at Miranda and smirked.
The tiny sliver of Suboxone she snorted that morning was like a rickety wooden pier beneath a storm surge of shame. She stared up at the television and busied her hands in her lap.
โSo, is your son there? In the audience?โ
โNah,โ said Tasha. โHeโs at his high school coachโs house in Pensacola with his girlfriend, his auntie, and cousins. Heโll be on that zoom thing whenever they call his name though. Theyโre all excited about being on TV.โ
Miranda watched a tearful mother and a proud father speak to an interviewer after their son donned a green cap and bounded across the stage, a massive kid with cornrows in a sharp-tailored suit. His thousand-watt smile reflected camera flashes as he vigorously shook hands with the man who called his name.
โWhoโs the dude in the yellow jacket?โ asked Dixie.
โThe commissioner.โ Tasha stared up at the mother being interviewed, a plus-size woman in a sequined gown. She fanned tears from her eyes with a gloved hand as she touted her sonโs character and work ethic.
Miranda could feel her friendโs regret and longing like barometric pressure in the next seat. She attempted to cheer her up. โMaybe theyโll pick your son next.โ
โI doubt it,โ said Tasha.
โWhy not? You told me he was the best quarterback in the draft.โ
Dixie shot her a condescending look.
โWhat?โ she said. โWhat did I say?โ
โCornerback.โ Tashaโs eyes remained locked hypnotically on the screen. โCedric is a cornerback. And he is the best in this draft class as far as raw talent is concerned. Heโs the fastest, tallest, most physical, he can mirror receivers in their routes, has the best instincts . . . pure ballhawk, that boy. An interception machine.โ She glanced at Miranda. โI showed you the JPay videos from his Pro Day, didnโt I?โ
Miranda vaguely remembered a grainy, thirty-second video clip on the kiosk when she was going through withdrawals. โI think so.โ
Another hulking kid in an expensive suit strutted across the stage to shake hands with the commissioner, another proud mom was being interviewed.
โNah, Cedโs problem ainโt talent. All those analysts up there on the TV agree on his skills. But my son is a hot head. Heโs got a short fuse. See the man on the left in the blue tie?โ
Miranda nodded.
โHe called him a locker room cancer.โ
โThatโs a mean thing to say.โ
She stared at the television. Her jaw clenched and unclenched. โHe punched a teammate in the face on the sideline of the spring game. Got him kicked off the team.โ
โItโs a violent sport,โ Dixie rasped. โYouโd think theyโd appreciate the testosterone.โ
Tasha shook her head. โI shot his dad when he was eleven years old. Heโs been getting in fights ever since. โCourse it ainโt his fault. He was just a little boy out there in that cold world, doing his best to survive. Livinโ on his auntieโs couch, livinโ at his coachโs house, livinโ with friends. Itโs a miracle he made it this far.โ A salty tear slid over her chiseled cheekbone. โMy baby is about to go to the NFL!โ She smiled, inhaled, exhaled. โHe just shouldโve been a first-round draft pick. He shouldโve been up on that stage. We shouldโve been up on that stage.โ
Miranda touched her shoulder.
โWhat round do you think heโll go?โ asked Dixie.
โHis agent says no later than the fourth.โ The television projected geometric patterns of light against her ebony skin. โBut it really just depends on who has a need at his position and whoโs willing to take a chance on him. He could go earlier.โ
โAnd whatโs the difference between the first and fourth round?โ Dixie noticed a morsel of ramen on her leg and popped it in her mouth. โMoneywise.โ
She leaned back on the bench and sighed. โI donโt know. Thirty million? Forty? A whole ass-grip of cash. Fourth round picks are lucky to get a few mil.โ
Miranda fantasized about what she could do with that kind of moneyโbuy her dad a house, hire a post-conviction attorney, put some in a trust for Cameron . . .
โBut I ainโt gonna lie, even fourth-round money would be enough to get me back to court,โ said Tasha. โIโve got rock solid issues.โ
Dixie shot Miranda a here-we-go-again look.
โI see you cutting your eyes, Dixie Adams. Donโt be a hater. You know damned well Iโve got a strong case. Florida is a stand your ground state.โ She glanced at Miranda, as if seeking confirmation that those laws were still on the books.
โFlorida is a stand your ground state, thanks to strong conservative leadership,โ said Dixie. โIf our ginger law clerk buddy here had her way, the standup men and women who enacted that law would be replaced with a bunch of woke transgender Greenpeace socialists.โ
โHey,โ Miranda protested. โItโs Democrats that do the most forโโ
โSave it.โ Dixie threw up a stop sign. โI donโt want to talk politics. Iโm trying to watch the draft.โ
Bureaucracy. What comes to mind when you see these eleven letters? Itโs strange how certain words are claimed by political movements. Imagine Biden claiming the investigation into his son, Hunter, and the infamous laptop a โwitch-hunt,โ or Hillary Clinton referring to her internet server scandal back in 2016 as a โhoax.โ The thought of a Democrat using this MAGA vernacular is almost as jarring as the thought of Trump calling Mar-a-Lago his โsafe spaceโ or signing his executive orders โhe/him.โ
I know all about bureaucracies. I am currently living in one: the Federal Bureau of Prisons. (And if right now youโre imagining me riding around in golf carts while getting stock tips from former investment bankers, think again. I live in a crumbling dungeon that was built during the Great Depression. I can stick my arms out and touch both walls of my tiny cell. The water is murky, thereโs black mold in the showers, and the air tastes like asbestos. But thatโs another essay . . .)
After the inauguration, when Elon Musk and his merry band of tech nerds rode deep into the heart of government bureaucracy, the media outlets on the left portrayed them as a bunch of 20-year-old, nose-ringed, purple-haired college kids who, best case scenario, were threats to national security. Worst case scenario: they were hellbent on destroying longstanding programs like Medicare and Social Security. Of course, conservative talk radio and Fox News hosts labeled this as typical lib hysteria, overlooked the occasional error made by the DOGE teamโlike adding an extra zero to the amount savedโand cheered on the chainsaw-wielding Musk as he slashed and burned his way through USAID, the Center for Disease Control, and various other American institutions.
As my fellow prisoners and I await the great and terrible artificial eye of DOGE to train its laser-focused pupil on the 8-billion-dollar budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, there are two conflicting camps of expectation.
Ironically, itโs the Fox News MAGA majority who are abuzz with boundless optimism. They believe that Elon will drastically reduce the budget by shutting down prisons and allowing anyone with less than three years remaining on their sentence to finish up on home detention. And since Trump signed significant criminal justice reform into law in 2018 with the First Step Act and then pardoned 1600 Jan-Sixers on his first day back in office, there is plenty of cause for hope.
Across the unit, at the CNN television, my liberal brothers have a much gloomier outlook. They fear that less money will result in less guards which will result in less programs and inevitably more lockdowns. They take Trumpโs tough-on-crime campaign promises at face value and worry that, even as American citizens, they too could end up in an El Salvadorian supermax due to federal prison overcrowding.
Where do I stand? Iโll give you one guess and two hints. (Itโs neither left nor right.) If Mr. Musk begins hacking away at the FBOP, prisons will absolutely be shut down. Will this translate into people going home, or will they simply be transferred to other facilities? Hard to say. But itโs important to point out that prison profiteers like the GEO Group were key donors to the Trump war chest in 2016, 2020, and 2024. And Iโm guessing that they would love nothing more than a fat federal contract to take over the Bureau of Prisons. But what would it say about this country if the same corporations who were lobbying Congress for tougher laws and longer sentencesโnot in the interest of justice, but in the interest of their own bottom linesโwere the same companies who were receiving multi-billion-dollar contracts to warehouse the nationโs prisoners?
In many ways, it feels like America is not entering a โgolden ageโ as the president proclaimed at his inauguration, but something more akin to the Dark Ages. Especially when it comes to the hidden world of corrections.
Hereโs a newsflash for anyone just waking from a coma: Project 2025 is in full effect. The president did a masterful job of distancing himself from the controversial 900-page manifesto in the run-up to the 2024 election, but he wasted no time in installing its framework on his very first day back in the White House.
From the DOGE dismantling of the administrative state, to the war on D.E.I., to the defunding of Ivy League Universities, to J.D. Vanceโs speech before our NATO allies in Germany, to this massive immigration return-to-sender effort, to the recent tariff grenades lobbed into the global market; from the melting ice of Greenland to the Panama Canal; from our old buddy Canada to our new buddy Russia, all the way down to the Gulf of America, one thing is abundantly clearโthis is not your fatherโs Republican Party . . .
This is not even your Uncleโs Tea Party movement. In fact, this current Trump administration barely resembles the last Trump administration. And to debate the motives and tenets of these bygone political philosophies as if applicable to this new shape-shifting MAGA machine is to argue with the stirred dust and lingering exhaust of a bus that has already roared past.
The old left/right paradigm of Blue Dog labor unions versus corporate executives, the liberal anti-war movement versus GOP defense hawks, Democrat entitlement caucuses versus small government Republicans, the leftist lawyer lobby and right-wing venture capitalists, Main Street and Wall Street, pro-life and pro-choice, even black and white . . . These once bold-line divisions are suddenly thin and grey, as politically relevant in 2025 as Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.
Iโm going to have to interrupt my own essay here. It sounds like I know what Iโm talking about, doesnโt it? This smug, professorial tone; my OโReillian command of current events, that impressive bus metaphor a couple paragraphs ago . . . Do not be misled. I have no idea whatโs going on. I donโt think anyone does. Not Elon Musk, not Speaker Johnson, not Senator Thune, not even Melania. Is he running for a third term? Will he actually defy the courts on some of these immigration rulings? Are these tariffs for real? Or just the art of the deal?
No idea.
Maybe thatโs the draw of having a reality show in the Oval Officeโthe danger, the intrigue, the daily cliffhanger episodes. โWill the worldโs longest running democracy survive? Tune in tomorrow to find out.โ
But I keep returning to a single question. It has almost become a north star for me amid the chaos of wildly swinging markets, tariffs threatened and then almost immediately rolled back, DOGE firings and DOGE rehirings, the hyperventilating on CNN and the cheerleading on FOX News. It is a question that every Democrat, every Republican, and every independent with firm political opinions should be asking themselves. Not just once, but daily. With every new headline. Itโs a question for anyone in pursuit of the Truth. And it goes like this . . .
A quick observation regarding the Dow. Itโs a been a little over 48 hours since the president declared April 2nd, 2025 โLiberation Dayโ and imposed tariffs on all of our trading partners across the globe, a move that has caused the market to shed six trillion dollars so far. The biggest drop since Covid.
This Covid connection is ironic because 2020 is the same year we opened a Robinhood account and began buying a little stock every month. In the process, this humble prisoner learned all about the discipline of investing and what some call โthe most powerful force in the worldโโcompound interest. Watching this account grow has been one of the most exciting experiences of my life. The S&P 500 had back-to-back years of over 20% growth in 2023 and 2024, and the handful of stocks that I picked were doing even better than that. We were right at double the total amount we invested after last yearโs presidential election. Optimism was high and the markets reflected this. But most of those gains have been wiped over the last couple months, culminating with these extremely painful last few days.
I keep thinking about a Wall Street Journal article I read back in January about Warren Buffet and how while everyone was busy buying stock, the Oracle of Omaha was selling. I wish I would have followed his lead right about now. And if my little Robinhood account has been so thoroughly decimated over the last couple days, I can only imagine what some peopleโs retirement accounts are looking like this morning. Not selling now though. Not panicking either. Weโll keep chugging along, month by month, sticking to the script, taking advantage of the discounted prices. When youโre committed to the long view, you donโt get caught up in all the Bull and Bear headlines. Weโll survive. America will rebound. Potentially stronger than ever with a trade policy that benefits this nationโs workers and consumers. Sounds like this is the endgame. But these are admittedly dark days.
The president recently advised America to โhang toughโ in a Truth Social post. What he is attempting to do is extremely bold and a massive gamble politically. Iโm pretty sure those independent voters and swing states who were the tipping point in the โresounding mandateโ that swept him back into office did not have a crashing stock market or a global recession in mind when they pulled the lever. Conservative media outlets are appealing for patience, albeit with nervous smiles. What else can we do but wait and see and try not to watch those plummeting red numbers on the ticker? But itโs hard not to wonder how thunderous the outcry would be if the Biden administration issued these same tariffs, or if it was Obama who was counseling us to โhang tough.โ
Bad news, my friends. Many of you might recall me exuberantly declaring that I would be at a federal halfway house by November of this year. Itโs a date weโve had circled since I first arrived. (In 2007, George W. Bush signed a law that allowed for inmates to serve up to 10% of their sentences in halfway houses/home detention. My actual release date on a 288-month sentence is November 2026. March was my 20-year anniversary of incarceration. I am well over 90% done with this long journey.) Even though the halfway house is not really โhomeโ; Iโd be able to work a job for my final year, save money, spend weekends at Momโs house, and make a smooth transition back into society.
Unfortunately, this will not be happening.
Due to โbudget constraintsโ in the federal B.O.P. (the Bureau of Prisons), myself and thousands of others recently had our halfway house time severely slashed from 365 days down to just the final 60 days of our sentences. Barely enough time to find a job, find housing, and navigate a world that did not even have smart phones when many of us left. Iโm lucky to have a strong support system and a place to go. Some of these guys will be starting from scratch. In an inflationary America with little or no work experience, the temptation to return to crime for a quick buck and a little stability will be difficult for some of these men to resist.
Is this good for society? Ninety percent of federal prisoners are returning to their communities one day. Is dropping them off with little or no transition period going to solve the problem of rampant crime? Is this a smart way to combat recidivism? Is this in the interest of public safety? Not by my calculus.
Again, the B.O.P. cites budget constraints as the reason for this head scratcher of a policy change. They use โlimited resources, chronic understaffing, and deteriorating facilitiesโ as their justification to reduce the halfway house time to 60 days. (Believe me, I know all about deteriorating facilities. I am currently housed in a mold-ridden, roach-infested prison that was built in the 1930s. This place should have been condemned a couple decades ago.) But is not allowing tens of thousands of people to go to halfway houses and home detention going to โeaseโ overcrowding? These same dilapidated, understaffed prisons are going to be more packed, more dangerous, and more expensive to run with a yearโs worth of inmates who would have been in the halfway houses now needing to be fed, clothed, housed, and supervised.
The crazy thing is that it costs MORE to keep us here for longer. Prisons have overhead expenses that do not apply to halfway houses. And definitely not to home detention.
So to recap: This recent change lowers the offenderโs chance for success by limiting the window of opportunity to transition and thereby increasing the chances of recidivism. It also increases overcrowding, makes institutions less safe, puts a greater strain on the workforce . . . And it costs more. A commonsense solution would be instead to immediately release all the Second Chance Act-eligible inmates to halfway houses and/or home detention for those with a verified address. But they wonโt. Why? It makes too much sense. This is the B.O.P.โBackwards On Purpose.
โApril 3, 2025
*** An update! I received some exciting news after I typed this essay. Three days after the BOP updated the policy that reduced my halfway house time down to a basically nothingโa few weeksโthey rescinded the order! So now I am back to the veryย real possibility of being home for Thanksgiving. (Is it me or are we living in the era of thrilling highs an crushing lows? Just when I thought last weekโs stock market ride was about as dizzying as things could get…)
Imagine a scenario where an American was removed from society for 20 years. Weโll say it was voluntary, for the purposes of this essay. No internet, no cable television; his main source of information, the ABC World News at 6:30pm EST every night along with the political roundtable shows on Sunday mornings. Kinda like a social experiment in a controlled environment that examines the prolonged effect of the legacy media on the human brain. What would this personโs political opinions and beliefs look like based on his daily diet of news consumption? How might his worldview be shaped after a couple of decades of David Muir, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos?
Dystopian as it may sound, you actually do know someone like this. You are currently reading his words.
When it became fashionable to distrust the media and โfake newsโ became a national catchphrase, I didnโt get it. Why would anyone not trust Cecilia Vega? Why would respected journalists like Jonathan Karl and Martha Raddatz tell bald-faced lies to the American people? I still donโt believe they would. But a couple things happened over the last few years that at least caused me to reevaluate my blind trust in network news. The most alarming and egregious of which happened during the January Sixth riot . . .
Amid the live ABC News footage of gallows being erected, chants of โhang Mike Pence!โ, police being beaten with Trump 2020 flags, windows being busted, and members of Congress stacking tables and chairs as barricades, another ominous clip was woven into the feedโthe image of Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jrโs fiancรฉe at the time, laughing and dancing at what appeared to be a party in the West Wing. I think she might have even had a champagne flute in her hand.
This was a tipping point for me. The moment when my disgust and outrage boiled over. The fact that this family of billionaires from Queens, New York, had convinced rural America that they were somehow their champions was bad enough, but now they were celebrating as democracy collapsed? Unreal.
So I did what every other writer does in times of distress and despairโI grabbed my pen and wrote about it. The result was a scathing indictment of this modern-day Nero fiddling in the Oval Office while the Capitol burned. I titled the essay Final Act of Cowardice, slapped it in an envelope, and mailed it out to be posted on the Malcolm Ivey website.
A year later, I was watching ABCโs โThis Week with George Stephanopoulosโ when a guest mentioned in passing how the footage of Guilfoyle dancing was actually from a previous White House function and did not occur on Jan 6. Wait, what? This seems like something that should have been vociferously condemned, investigated, and corrected in the interest of capital T, Truth. Instead, barely a footnote.
Shortly after this revelation, I watched a former White House staffer testify before the House January Sixth Committee that the president had to be restrained by Secret Service in order to be kept from joining the rioters/insurrectionists/sightseers that day. Restrained. An allegation that Trump vehemently denies, but thatโs not the point. I accused him of cowering in the safety of his office while his supporters and Capitol Police paid the consequences for his reckless words and his inability to admit defeat. I even included it in the title of the essay. While it is inarguable that all those peopleโand America as a wholeโdid pay a hefty price for his reckless words and inability to accept defeat (he still doesnโt), I doubt that even his most vocal critics would classify him as a coward. Donald Trump is many things, but a coward is not one of them. The world learned this in real time on July 13, 2024, when his kneejerk reaction to an assassination attempt was to pop back up, raise his fist, and yell, โFight! Fight!โ
Sidenote: The intent of this essay is not to capitulate. Iโm not a tech oligarch seeking to expand my empire, or a Democratic senator in a red district, or an Ivy League dean in fear of losing federal funding. Iโm just a prisoner. A guy whoโs changed his life while serving his time and hopes to reenter a society not teetering on the brink of civil war, economic collapse, crumbling infrastructure, and totalitarian government. But Iโm also a writer. And a writerโs job is to tell the truth.
Back to last yearโs MAGA rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One of the interesting things about this day in relation to the media was how the crowd quickly turned on the press correspondents who were covering the event. โYou did this!โ they shouted in the eerie aftermath of the shooting. Of course, the journalists they were referring to were pretty much everyone except Fox News.
Ever since I arrived at my first federal prison last year, Iโve been fascinated by the cable news experience and how the reporting varies on a given topic depending on which channel youโre on. Itโs like two different countries almost. In a federal joint, this difference is further underscored by the fact that televisions are segregated like Jim Crow Era water fountains in the Deep South. The โwhite TVโ is mostly Fox News interspersed with a little History Channel here and there when the 24-hour news cycle gets redundant. The โblack TVโ is mostly BET with either MSNBC or CNN for news. Each station is transmitted through headphones. Flipping back and forth between the two has been a revelation for me.
For instance, when CNN was reporting on the marketโs recent nosedive due to tariff fears and consumer uncertainty, Fox was hammering transgender athletes competing in female sports . . . When Fox is highlighting how we are 39 trillion in debt with a 1.9 trillion deficit and how itโs fiscally irresponsible to borrow money just to give it to other nations via USAID, CNN was talking about a looming โconstitutional crisisโ and how the current administration might defy judgesโ orders . . . When the editor of the progressive Atlantic magazine was accidentally invited to a Signal group chat full of Trumpโs highest ranking Cabinet members who were discussing the planned bombing of Houthi rebels two hours before it happened and sending each other muscle emojis as the targets were struck, Fox News quickly pivoted to a high-ranking MS-13 gang member who was nabbed just outside of D.C.
Similar to our current political climate, one side is clearly rooting for the other to fail. But contrary to popular belief, I donโt think that the media brass โhatesโ Donald Trump. I think he is the only hope of prolonging their inevitable demise, even if ratings are currently down. Just today, Iโve been listening to coverage of him floating the idea of a third term. And another story about him going after the nationโs largest law firms. This is headline gold for news organizations. And every day, itโs something new and disruptive. No other president is giving the media that.
And then there is radio . . .
My friends on the right will disagree with this, but one exception to all this partisan media animosity is NPR. Yes, certain shows, hosts and guests obviously have their own views. But there is nothing remotely polemic or political about Science Friday or A Way with Words or Hidden Brain or Marketplace. I owe so much to National Public Radio. Far from home, in solitary confinement cells, through hurricanes and wildfires and cancel culture and presidential elections and war and pandemics . . . NPR has been an amazing source of fact-based education. They are part of the reason an autodidact prisoner like the author of this essay even knows what โautodidactโ means ๐ Unfortunately, NPR and PBS are now in Trumpโs crosshairs. I hope the opposition can find a way to resist him on this. Time will tell.
Thatโs it for this week. See yโall next Tuesday. Stay safe out there.
Malcolm Ivey / Author 