The moment I stepped foot into Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois, I felt danger. 

People referred to Menard as “The Pit” because of its location at the bottom of a hill inside a ravine, just off the Mississippi River. 

The white faces in corrections uniforms singled me out right away among the Black and brown bodies shackled and lined up in front of them. I stand 6-foot-2, and I’m about 200 pounds. My skin is dark, my voice deep, and I wear a serious demeanor that some interpret to be angry. In other words, I look like the stereotype of the Black man that white people used to justify lynching. 

I felt danger, but I wasn’t afraid. I had been sentenced to life without parole, known as LWOP, a few weeks prior. Most people around me had written me off. I had nothing to lose. 

Before my arrest, I lived a life most people predicted, and perhaps even hoped, would end badly. I was involved in a gang and somehow survived various violent encounters. By the time I arrived at The Pit, in January 2008, I was numb.

After a year, I began thinking about why I didn’t feel fear. I knew prison was an abnormal experience, but the abnormal was normal to me. 

It took some serious soul-searching before realizing that it was because that numbness also meant I didn’t feel hope. I accepted that my life would end badly — either naturally or violently — and probably because of my own behavior. 

But with my epiphany, I realized I had a choice: I could continue behaving as someone without hope of ever getting out, or I could orient my thoughts and actions toward an alternative end. 

I chose the latter.

Early on, it was hard to see beyond my LWOP sentence. When you’re sentenced to LWOP, you’re not just deprived of any kind of physical freedom. You’re also deprived of opportunities to reimagine yourself. That’s a tragedy. Time often stops for incarcerated individuals. They see themselves as the age they were when they were locked in, not unlike how the character Neo from the Matrix imagined himself with hair whenever he plugged in.

An LWOP sentence also keeps you from participating in educational and vocational programming. The Illinois Department of Corrections prioritizes prisoners who have short sentences, as do many prison systems across the country.

I realized that I may have been shutting out hope because I was afraid of losing something precious or being tempted by something unattainable. Hope is usually attached to an outcome. Having lost precious relationships over the course of my incarceration, I feared establishing new ones. And pursuing freedom felt ridiculously unattainable given the weight of my sentence. 

I began looking for things to hope for. 

I learned from the triumphs and mistakes of other prisoners. Many of my peers pursued education through the mail and received a paralegal certificate from the Blackstone Career Institute. Others continued their participation with gang activity, which landed them in administrative detention where their telephone calls, visits and mail were scrutinized by prison personnel. I didn’t want that to be my life. 

Instead, I was drawn to Christianity. It was there where I began to find hope again. But I did not want to appear uppity, or as someone who might cooperate with prison authorities, or as an evangelist for the white man’s religion. 

Eventually, I applied for a program called “Thinking for a Change,” a 12-week course that taught social skills, cognitive self-change and problem-solving techniques. 

Miraculously, I was accepted. Once in, the community helped me understand myself better. My peers helped me identify social and psychological ills that had contributed to the hopelessness I had felt before my arrest. 

My thinking shifted when I noticed that people around me started expressing hope that I could be triumphant, a far cry from the days when people hoped for my tragic demise. 

From there, I was empowered. I applied for the General Educational Development high school equivalency program, was accepted, and received my GED diploma in June 2016. 

In May 2023, after I was transferred from Menard to Stateville Correctional Center, I received a master’s degree in restorative justice ministry. 

LWOP doesn’t have to restrict our ability to reimagine ourselves.