Parole Board Experiences

Please note, these are not my own experiences; rather they are those of others who have been before the parole board and given more time on top of the sentence they had originally been given (and, sometimes, finished). Their experiences, I attentively perceived from their dull expressions and drained emotions, left some defeated and, at times, some unable to discern their existence.

What you are going to read are firsthand accounts from actual prisoners who I interviewed; those who have gone before the parole board and were denied. I will not use their actual names; instead I will use their initial/s or nickname, followed by our dialogue.

During the exchanges, no one who I interviewed possessed a concrete idea of what the parole board expected out of them other than more programs along with the many they had already completed. Some had been incarcerated for 30 years for a crime they claim would have netted them less time had they committed them in this modern period.

The first prisoner I interviewed was an Indian-born American, who I will refer to as “A”.

“How’s it going today, A?” I greeted him. He was sitting on his mobile walker, basking in the sun’s rays. He had been soaking up vitamin D nearly all afternoon.

“I’m okay. Just getting some sun,” is what I managed to discern. (What he actually said was “Jus’ gettin’ so’ sun.”)

“I’m glad I caught you. Can I ask you something, if you don’t mind?” I asked.

“Go’n ahead,” said A, welcoming.

“How much time were you sentenced to?”

“I was sentenced to 19 years to life,” he responded. His American accent wasn’t completely lucid, but I had been around him long enough to understand what he was saying. His words came out as a unity of his tongue and nasal functions creating what little English he had learned throughout his years of incarceration. “However, I have been in prison for 29 years. I’m 68-years-old; what more do they want from me?” It wasn’t a question, but a soliloquy.

“How many times have you been up to the board?” I asked, referring to his meeting with the parole board.

“Twice already,” A said, the words rolling off his tongue. “I was given ten years the first time up. They said it’s required; that aggravated murder convictions are automatically flopped ten years their first time up. I was fortunate. I went up at my half way mark.”

“What did they say the next time?” I interrogated.

“They said I was done. Said, given that I had completed every program required of me, and that the plan I had upon my release was a good one, I should be okay. I thought I had done it.”

“But what happened?”

“It was fake!” he exclaimed in his native tone. “A few days later, I received a piece of paper in the mail; they recommended I do eight more years. What more do they want from me?” he reiterated. It was a question that had obviously haunted him many times before.

My next interview was with “M”; a huge man, not in height but weight. Eating was his vice. In his cell, food was hidden everywhere: beneath the cot he slept on, in his drawers, in his locker box, and inside his net bags. A bitterness tended to hold him down. He was sitting in the dayroom watching TV when I caught up to him. His large brown fingers tussled a bag of chips.

“What was your experience like with the parole board?” I asked M. 

“My first time up was bizarre,” he said in his Barry White-ish voice.

“What did they say they require of you before seeing them again?”

“That’s the thing; you never know, man. My first time, they talked about my last prison bid, even the tickets I had caught then. That was 1993. Despite all the programs I completed, they wanted me to take more.” He expressed his dismay of the suggestion. “I have over 50 programs done, 40 support letters. I was a mentor, even facilitated a program that helped fathers reunite with their children. My support ranged from pastors from great churches, to a cop.”

My eyes lit up in response to the vast evidence he had, and more so for the support letters he had amassed. “A COP?!” I expressed in shock.

“It’s my brother. He was a corrections officer, then he became a cop.”

I was still shocked. I just couldn’t understand, with the backing this man had in support, how it could be overlooked drew blanks. “Did they say why they gave you more time?”

“Nah. But there was one lady who made it clear that she had it out for me. She nit-picked at everything in my file, as if her decision was the sole benefactor, and that her counterparts’ opinions were pointless.”

“How so?” I inquired. His visit with the board was intriguing.

“For example, she was staring at my brother’s letter, then out of the blue said, ‘Mr. M, can I ask you a question?’ ‘Sure ma’am,’ I said. ‘I’m reading one of your support letters; says here, your brother was a corrections officer, and now he’s a cop.’ ‘That’s right,’ I told her. But in my mind, I’m like, that’s a good thing, right? So, she goes on to say, ‘How is it your brother went right, and yet, you went left?’ I didn’t freeze up at her question, I just told her the truth: I made a poor decision, and he didn’t… They gave me five more years… Well, she did.”

A clerk with the institution’s legal library, I’ll call him “P”, was who I spoke with next. He’s a soft spoken man with an awkwardly smooth, gurgling voice, yet he is deliberate in speech. He works fervently to have his conviction overturned. It is why he works in the legal part of the library.

“Hey, P. What’s new?” I greeted, upon stepping into the cramped and stuffy area.

“Same ol’, same ol’. You know it goes,” he said, his voice as hollow as boards above a hidden void.

The color in P’s ashen face seemed drained, and his greying hair looked thinner than falling feathers. If a horror film scout was ever to pull him for a part in a movie, P’s coffee stained teeth would be the reason. No joke.

“I hear you,” I said. “Hey…” I then broached another subject. “How many times have you been before the parole board?”

“I went up two years ago. It was my first time after finishing up 18 years,” he said, then added, “They gave me five more years.”

“Did they say why?” Befuddled was the tone of my expression, because the 60-year-old man looked as if he didn’t have an abusive bone in his body.

“‘Nature of crime,’ they said. But I hear that’s what they say to everyone their first time up,” he said. “What’s crazy about all of this is, they throw that in my face and they know I wasn’t the shooter. The actual shooter wrote an affidavit on my behalf admitting that I had no idea of what his intentions were that night.”

This information stunned me. “What?!” I exclaimed with my inside voice. Mind you, we were in a library within a library.

“Yeah,” he said, understanding of my reaction.

“Man, that’s crazy,” I said, hoping that my disagreeing tone of his situation was supportive enough to cheer him up. “So, what do they expect of you in case you see them again?”

“Well, hoping there is no ‘next time’, but if there is, there’s not much for me to complete. I’ve completed nearly every program one could take. All they want me to do is keep my nose clean. When they told me that, I felt like a kid looking for a father’s approval.”

Eleven years ago, I celled with a guy named “Chunk” (obviously not his real name); that’s what everyone called him anyway. He was a clean-shaven guy then. He kept a tight taper fade, and routinely purchased clothes boxes to keep his dresser full of fresh clothes. The old never got a chance to fade before he was exchanging them.

Chunk had been incarcerated 19 years then, on a 15 years to life sentence. The parole board gave him eight years when he got to the 15-year mark. Chunk and I departed from the institution we were roommates at, and throughout the years I occasionally would wonder if he had gotten out. At one point I was certain he had. Eleven years later, however, I ran into Chunk: he was still here.

“Man, you got big,” he acknowledged. (When we were roommates, despite being 180lbs, I still looked small then. Now I was 220lbs at six-feet tall, and reasonably physically fit.)

“Yeah, I was a kid when we were bunkies,” I said. “But you… man! I thought you were home by now.”

His head lolled, and he shook it with a bit of shame. “Who are you telling?” Chunk said, picking his head up.

“How many times have you seen the board already?” I asked him, but in my mind I tried doing the math. It had been eleven years since I had last seen him. I knew for certain he had been before them four years prior to us being roommates. Afterwards, I guessed two times, maybe, within eleven years.

“After we were bunkies, I’ve been up twice. Three times all together,” he corroborated my presumption. “But I can’t blame no one but myself. I’m always trying to make money, and I always get jammed up. I could have probably been home by now. Everybody who was on this case with me already made their cut.”

“Your co-defendants?!” I exclaimed, bewildered. “How many people was there on the case with you?”

“It was three of us. One was my cousin. He got paid on his second meeting with the board. What’s crazy is, he was the actual shooter.”

It wasn’t the first time I had heard someone say they weren’t the actual shooter, and yet they were doing more time, and it was crazy. But all he could do was embrace it. “When do you go back up?”

“In months, man.” This upcoming meeting changed Chunk’s entire emotional vibe, his energy was more jubilant. He rubbed his hands together like he was preparing to eat a meal. “I’m ready, man. I think this is it,” he said, indicating that he believed the parole board would let him go.

“Man, I would think so given everyone else on the case is gone,” I said, still processing his predicament. I was more pulled in to the fact that he took responsibility for the extra time the board had given him and didn’t place the blame on anyone else like many others would have.

“That’s what I said. I been doing this for too long. My son is in prison now. I have grandkids. I had a stroke last year. Man, I’m done. They gotta give it to me.” He seemed to plead for his sanity during the spiel of words.

“What did they say they wanted you to do before you come to see them again? Take some more programs?” I asked.

“Just stay out of the way. That’s it. I’ve already completed all the required programs. I even have support letters from some of the prison staff here at the institution,” Chunk said proudly, because to get staff to write a letter to the parole board on one’s behalf you must be doing something right.

“That’s great, man. Sounds like you’ve ticked all the boxes necessary to guarantee your freedom,” I said.

He stared at me through exhausted eyes, even his disheveled beard looked tired. It was obvious he was broken down. At that moment, I realized what their definition of “rehabilitated” actually meant. “I hope I have…” He paused, stared to his left and said, “Because I don’t have no more time in me to give them.” His sincere tone left me worried.

My next interview involved a guy who had been incarcerated for 33 years for murder and aggravated robbery. I’ll call him “S.Q”. When he spoke, his words dragged as if his voice was speaking before his mind could tell it what to say. It was odd, to say the least.

“What’s up, S.Q?” I greeted the welcoming man. His meek awkwardness continued as he sat there in one of many bluish-green dayroom chairs, cutting up a bowl of red apples. It was 8:30 in the evening and he was eating apples. Okay… (Well, one or two might have been okay, but this was many… How? Why?) I smiled to his benefit because his behavior was kindred to peace.

“You see it,” he replied.

S.Q had a longstanding issue with completing number two tasks in the restroom, so there was my explanation for his apple feast. “What’s with the apples, is it the bowel movement thing?” The dayroom’s bright light reflected off his transparent glasses, so I was unable to determine if he minded my asking. Nonetheless, he nodded his head and continued to eat his apples, seemingly unbothered by my question. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

He stopped eating, then answered, “Go ahead.”

“How many times have you been up to the parole board?”

“Twice already,” S.Q stated.

“Did they say why they gave you more time your last time up?” I inquired.

This question seemed to awaken his dormant emotions, because when he spoke next he let loose. “Every time I go up they ask me why am I still fighting my conviction. As if I’m guilty. I’ve maintained my innocence since day one,” he expressed, upset. “Yet they ask me the same question time and time again, as if they’re the jury that convicted me.”

Not the answer I was looking for, but whatever was on his chest he certainly got it off. “So what did they say they wanted from you the next time you go up?”

“They’re trying to trick me. Said if I would just confess they would let me go.” The humble individual who I approached earlier had left and was now replaced by a man smote by the system, and who spoke with a kind of paranoid delirium.

My eyebrows rose in skepticism. I know the system can be callous, and I didn’t want to cast his truth aside, but I had known him to add emphasis on stories. “That sounds kind of crazy.”

“It is crazy, but I’m not confessing. I didn’t do it,” he said, defiant.

“F” was in his mid-50s with a decaying body. Not the literal term of death, but rather an unhealthy sense. His stomach protruded out further than his chest by maybe four inches. His peanut butter skin tone contrasted his neck with a sickly pale difference. F had been incarcerated for 25 years, he and another man had stood accused of raping a mentally disabled woman, and both were sentenced to 25 to 50 years. At the time of this meeting, he had no clue that I knew of the charges he had been convicted of. Nevertheless, I was not the judge.

“I heard that you saw them people recently,” I said, referring to the parole board. Not many people like sharing what takes place at their parole hearings in the days following, as many are still trying to wean themselves off the disappointment of their rejected release. But, fortunately, F wasn’t like that, he didn’t mind.

“Yeah, they shot me down my first time up,” he said. F had a voice tantamount to a can stuck on the back wheel of a bicycle.

“Did they give you a reason as to why?” I asked.

He then appeared to get upset. “These people [the parole board members] brought up an institutional ticket that I caught 20 years ago. Man, I was just starting this bid then. I couldn’t believe it,” F shared. “I haven’t had a ticket in 20 years, and they mentioned nothing about that.” He shook his head, buried in silence.

When the depressing moment faded, I asked, “What did they say they wanted you to complete before you go up to see them again?”

“They didn’t say nothing, because I’ve done everything they could think of. I even obtained my bachelor’s degree… in prison. I am a different person from who I was when I got to prison,” he expressed. F left our conversation there. He stared up at the TV in the dayroom and watched attentively, likely to take his mind off of our exchange.

“R” is someone who I became good friends with here at the institution where I’m currently located. We’re from the same county, and know many of the same people. He is 30 years older than me, with 25 years in on his current prison sentence. This is his second time behind bars, and this one really took a toll on him.

We spoke in the center of the basketball court that was positioned in front our housing unit. “What do you have going on today?” I asked R. (Whenever we spoke, he always had a specific schedule for that day, and normally carried it out to the evening.)

“I’m gonna go watch the softball game later, and then I’m gonna go and chill at my rack. Other than that, there’s nothing.” He had an annoying voice, it was analogous to the cartoon character Cleveland Brown.

“Yeah, sounds like you got your day made up,” I said.

“Man, you got to, or you’ll go crazy in here.” His words were true.

I quickly changed the subject and got on track to what my actual purpose was for the meeting. “Hey, you been to see the parole board already, haven’t you?”

His grey eyebrows furrowed inward, not vexed by the question, more so intrigued. “Yeah,” he said, nodding.

“How many times? If you don’t mind me asking?”

R’s eyes fell to the ground to ponder the number. Then it came to him. “Three times,” he responded, holding up three fingers.

“What?!” I exclaimed. “Three times?!” The number turned my stomach. The person who I was speaking to in that moment didn’t give me the impression that he deserved extra time. But what did I know? “Did they say why? Or what they wanted you to do to better your chances of getting out?”

“No… They just told me to maintain family support,” he said, shrugging his shoulders at the suggestion. “I’m just go’n give them the same information that I gave them last time.” He sounded confident in this strategy. “They’re all I have left.”

I later interviewed an animated prisoner, “A.R”. When he told stories, they mostly sounded like lies. He had been incarcerated slightly over 30 years, and because of that he carried a large chip on his shoulder. A.R was so controversial that he could never keep a roommate longer than two months. Originally, many had been sympathetically supportive, believing he was being picked on by his roommates, and they were the problem. These suspicions were okay when it was just two people who bothered him. However, in prison, when it becomes more than two, or three, it becomes fairly clear where the problem derives. When confronted though, A.R. didn’t think it was him. 

A.R had been convicted of a robbery that left a man with a bullet to the head. He and his co-defendant were sentenced to 25 to 75 years in prison. Fortunately, for the man – and for A.R – he survived his injury. A.R maintained his innocence, but as the years went on, and with many visits to the parole board, he eventually admitted that he took part in the robbery, but he never yielded to his knowledge of a plan to shoot the victim.

After being denied parole four times, A.R shared with me that he felt he would have been better off shooting the victim himself, because then he could have felt that he was doing time for something he had actually done. However, it wasn’t this attitude that was keeping him incarcerated. I learned that in prior prison facilities, A.R could not keep his nose clean, and each incident bought him a ‘hole shot’; and what I’ve learned throughout this time is that if seeing the parole board is compulsory, then more trouble like that means more prison time.

We were on the recreation yard when I approached him. A.R was sitting on top of a picnic table beneath the evening sun, wearing an unnecessary sky blue sweater in the sweltering heat, and black sunglasses, while listening to what sounded like Gerald Levert. I thought he was asking for a heat stroke. “Hey, A.R. What’s happening?”

“Oh, hey, T. Just sittin’ here, enjoying this weather.”

Really? I thought to myself, wiping away the surfacing, perspiring sweat from my forehead. “You’re better than me.”

A.R chuckled at my statement after catching my drift. “So, what’s up with you?” he asked.

“Not much, man. I saw you over here chillin’,” I said, “and thought I would come check you out.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“I was hoping to pick your mind a bit,” I told him.

“Shoot,” he retorted.

So I did. “How many times have you been up to see the parole board?”

He didn’t have to think about it. “I’ve seen them people five times already, man, and every time I come back with a friggin’ headache.”

I laughed at the expression. “What did they say to you the last time you went up?”

“They said that I had a problem with taking responsibility. They wasn’t talkin’ about the facts of my case, but a punk ass ticket I got a year before. Do you believe that, man?”

I could believe it, but I didn’t tell him that. “What did you tell them after that?” I asked.

“Dig this. I told them, ‘had I committed the crime that I’m doing this time for today, I would be out in seven years’,” he shared.

I knew then, A.R didn’t want to go home, because what I had been told by many others was that you never confront parole boards for their contradicting assessments – it never turned out good if you did. And that may have been the anchor that was holding A.R from leaving. “That was bold, A.R,” I told him.

“Listen here, man…” he said, taking a shot at spilling what I considered as poor advice, and hoped he would never tell anyone else, “them people only knows boldness.”

My original assumption was proven: A.R didn’t want to go home.

The next interview I conducted was with “S.K”, a cool guy in his early-60s. He was in fair condition physically, with the exception of his bad back. To let him tell it, his back was fine. To everyone else, he walked like a week-old doe.

S.K was serving time for murder – life with the possibility of parole was his sentence. This meant that although he was serving life without an actual sentence, he was still entitled to be considered for parole after 25 years. Despite his circumstances nonetheless, he always appeared unfazed, as long as he had his daytime TV shows and afternoon Westerns, he was at peace. At the time of this interview, he had just enrolled into college; I had enrolled a year prior.

“How’s your classes coming along?” I asked. (We were mid-semester.)

“I’m finally getting the hang of this tablet stuff. Other than that, it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.”

“Yeah, once you get a few assignments complete, then it becomes commonsense.” 

“I’m ready now. It’s actually fun,” he stated.

You say that now, I said in my mind. And it was fun at the beginning of semesters. However, it was toward the end when things began dragging: enthusiasm, and the adaptability to assignments. “Hey, you’ve been up to the parole board, haven’t you?” I asked.

“Twice,” he responded.

“What did they say to you the last time you went up? Why did they flop you?”

“‘Nature of crime’, they said. And then they gave me two more years. That’s all they always give me.” He sounded okay with this.

“Did they say they wanted you to complete anymore programs before you come back to see them?”

S.K slightly leaned in, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear a great secret, and whispered, “They never say anything because I’ve taken everything,” he said. “But what does that mean, if they keep giving me two years every time?” he asked, seeking my opinion; one that I’m sure he had preconceived would coincide with his own ideas.

“It may mean they’re going to let you go,” I said. 

He took a step back and smiled with a pacified ego.

“T” was a white guy in his late-60s, with 45 years in the system. His hair was white as cotton, and his teeth looked to be hanging on by the threadlike roots of his gums. (I don’t know how they were hanging on, but they were.) Despite his dental malfunction, he had a soft voice and soft eyes, yet when he was angry, those soft eyes had a tendency to become like rays of piercing iron.

He was serving time for the murder of three people in the late-1970s, and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. T said that the death penalty had never been on the table, something I found bizarre given we were in Ohio, a pro-death penalty state. He was working the login desk in the institution’s OPI area when our conversation began.

“How is it going today, T?”

“It’s going,” he said, working on some sort of application. “Trying to get these applications logged in for those wanting a job in here they desperately want a job I would too if I knew I could be paid $80 a month.” He was a natural at talking without any pauses.

I, too, was there to sign up for a job, so the encounter was serendipitous. I knew he was a lifer, and with every lifer there was likely a backstory with the parole board. “Hey, you mind if I ask you some questions?” I said, slightly being forthcoming.

“Sure,” he responded, setting down his pen.

“Have you been to the parole board yet?” I asked.

“Many times.” His expression changed, and he suddenly appeared tired. 

“Did they say why they gave you more time?” I said, digging in.

“Well I killed three people so they consider me to be a serial killer guess they got a right to give me more time if they want I can’t tell them not to you know what I’m saying?” he said, longwinded.

“So, did they give you a set of things they suggest you complete before going to see them again?”

“They never tell me to do anything but I continue to take any program that’s available to me,” he said. “It’s all confusing though. Though I murdered three people I wasn’t treated as if I did early on in my bid.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well back in ‘86 when I was at Chillicothe Camp I used to drive warehouse trucks to Indiana by myself never once did I think about running,” he said. He was aloofly flustered, if such an emotion could be summed up.

“Wow…”

“Yeah but they stopped that. Guys started messing that up walking off bringing back drugs and the riots back in the day in Lucasville didn’t make things any better,” he said. His mind appeared to drift, then he added, “Things seem to be only getting worse.”

“I guess only time will tell how bad it gets, right?”

“Sure. With the little years that I do have left I hope I never get to witness it.” The tone of his voice was etched in staunch pessimism.

I’ve met many prisoners over the years who couldn’t accept the idea that, due to their own faults, they may have been the cause of the parole board giving them more time (instead of it being a begrudging system); more often it is the prisoner who places themselves in a deeper rut.

This was the case for a past roommate I had. “J.G” had been incarcerated for 22 years at the time. Implemented into the nefarious system at the age of 19 for a string of armed robberies, he was given a sentence of seven to 34 years. Prior to that, his childhood was infiltrated by group homes and foster care. At the time of this interview, he was 41-years-old, and obviously scarred by his past. With dark brown rings blanketing the perimeters of his sunken eyes, he looked like a zombie some days, especially without coffee. At six-feet-two-inches beneath his drapery clothing, he looked like a feeble 175lbs. Aside from his defeated appearance, he was fairly smart. He’d written a book, and even managed to get his name talked about on a large entertainment show. An example of his intelligence was presented on the days when we would watch Jeopardy. J.G would speak to the TV as if he were talking to Alex Trebek, like he was one of the contestants. He would carefully listen to the questions and answer around 50 percent of them correctly.

Nonetheless, it was his palpable mental issues that were depriving him his freedom.

Locked down at four o’clock count, we would regularly play a few games of chess. J.G would always insist he could beat me at will, despite the fact that he would lose every game we played. This frustrated him a lot I noticed so much so, he would insist we gamble, as if only then would he be able to prove his point. And so, we would gamble, but nothing would change. He would lose five games, and lose five ramen noodle soups, then quit.

He shared with me once that he had been up to the parole board before, so there was no reason for an act, as if I didn’t know. “What did the parole board say they wanted out of you your last time up?” I asked, shifting the mood.

“They told me that I had a problem with authority,” he said, as his face cringed. His eyebrows then rose and fell, and he nodded his head. “I told them that I never started those incidents. In every prison that I’ve been to, it is always them.”

Yeah, he had a problem, but it seemed like a deeper issue. “What did they say then?” I prodded.

“The same thing they do every time; I’ve been up to see them people three times, and whenever they see a new ticket on my jacket, they read off all the wild stuff I did in the past. But I haven’t had a ticket in four years, but that’s not good enough it seems.”

“What kind of ‘wild stuff’ have you done?” I asked curiously.

“I climbed the fence in the hole and didn’t come down in one incident. That happened at the Toledo Correctional Institution. In another incident, I threw a food tray in an officer’s face after he told me that he placed his pubic hairs in my food.”

It was a sick move by the officer. Those are situations I pray I never encounter. “You was wiling…” I said of his overall behavior, however.

“It’s always brought on by the prison staff,” he said. “I currently got a lawsuit ongoing for another incident, where the warden at the supermax facility I did five years at lied on me.”

“Lied about what?” I inquired.

“He said that I broke the institution’s elevator.” 

My ears had to process what I had just heard. “What?” 

“He said that I broke the prison’s elevator,” he repeated.

“No, I heard that part, but how could that happen?” I asked, flabbergasted by the insinuation.

“At the time, we only came out for an hour a day, but for three days we were being denied to come out. It was the only way we could take a shower. So, on the third day, I went off and popped the fire sprinkler.” (This was a common tactic for individuals in isolation fed up with something affecting their diminutive comfort.) “It flooded the whole cell, and poured out into the dayroom area…” J.G paused and gradually shook his head. “But it just so happened that same day the warden was hosting some event inside of the prison, and decided to bring his motorcycle in on the same elevator they claimed I broke.”

“Was it documented that the bike was on the elevator?” I asked. 

He shook his head, no. “I’m trying to subpoena the prison records, but they’re fighting to prevent me from getting access to them.”

The story left me speechless. “When do you go back to the board?” 

“In 16 months,” he replied.

“Is there anything specific they want you to complete before they see you again?”

“‘Stay out of the way’. But it won’t matter…” he said, devoid of emotions.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember the warden who said that I broke the elevator?” I nodded my head, curiosity etched in my facial expression. “Well, he’s a member of the parole board now,” J.G revealed. He just couldn’t catch a break, which left me to question; who was at fault?

A week later, I was relocated to another part of the prison and J.G stayed behind. Days after that, I learned from a resident in my previous unit that after a corrections officer deliberately caused J.G to miss a video visit with a man shooting a documentary on the issue with old law inmates, J.G flung a chair at the officer’s desk.

At 58-years-old, and 34 years in on his prison sentence, “Z” – with his humble aura – was one of the prisoners who I had interviewed most. He was one of those white guys who had grown up with black guys his whole life, and felt as though he knew us well; so talking to me didn’t make him feel uncomfortable.

I found Z in the all-purpose room, putting the finishing touches on a painting he had been working on for quite some time. “What’s up, Z?”

“Ready to go, man.” He had just seen the parole board a year earlier and was given two years, but his next meeting was coming fast.

“I hear that,” I agreed. “What did they say they wanted you to do before seeing them again?” I asked.

“They told me to complete an AA program,” Z responded. He stopped painting and blankly stared at nothing. “What’s crazy about all of this is, two days after I saw them, I walked over to recovery services to sign up, and the program facilitator, like some soothsayer, said she had been waiting for me. She said someone called her and told her to place me in the program. Strangely, I believe it was one of the parole board members.” He dipped his paint brush into the cup of water and focused back on his task, then said, “God works in mysterious ways.”

I had never heard of someone being supported by the board their first time up. “He certainly does,” I retorted. I left him to his work and departed, ascended by hope after the encounter.

Note from the author: The idea for ‘Parole Board Experiences’ is to shed a light on the untold feelings of what men (and, if I had the chance to cover women, who I’m sure are affected in the same way) are going through after a visit with the parole board. Often the denial of a parole date is told. What is not told, however, is that the accused gets just one moment at their hearing to try and get the board to hear and see the change in the person sitting before them. This one chance they have is oftentimes a day of both hope and disappointment: hope because most feel after they’ve done 15 or 30 years, that for the first time it has to be their moment; the following disappointment, however, is never really taken into consideration.

So, these are the stories of the disappointment. Stories of men who have succumbed to the philosophy of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’. Their shallow characters represent their drained responses to rejection, to which have been reciprocated from vague explanations for denials of their freedom and rehabilitation.