In 2016, an essay arrived in our offices from John J. Lennon, then incarcerated at Attica Correctional Facility in New York. “The Murderer’s Mother” was a personal essay in the best sense: compelling and honest without being self-aggrandizing.11xJohn J. Lennon, “The Murderer’s Mother,” The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2016, vol. 18, no. 2, (Summer 2016): 106–110. John did not rationalize taking the life of a fellow drug dealer on a street in Brooklyn. Nor did he sidestep the psychological toll that his incarceration has taken on his aging mother. After his essay appeared, John and I began corresponding and soon became editorial colleagues and friends. In the summer of 2019, I traveled to Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Westchester County, New York, where I spent the day with John and his family, celebrating his graduation from Mercy College with a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science. John has gone on to become an award-winning journalist writing from prison. This year, his New York Review of Books essay “Peddling Darkness” was a National Magazine Award finalist in reviews and criticism. He is also in the final stages of preparing his book, The Tragedy of True Crime, which will be published by Celadon Books in the fall of 2025. John agreed to talk with me from Sullivan Correctional on how American prisons fail inmates, as well as some ways in which they are improving.22xWhile this interview was in progress, news arrived that New York governor, Kathy Hochul, would close Sullivan Correctional Facility and Great Meadow Correctional Facility by the end of 2024. This closure means that John and hundreds of other inmates will be relocated to other facilities, disrupting routines, workshops and classes, therapy sessions, and innumerable other elements of delicately balanced daily life behind bars. Many of the inmates at Sullivan are mentally ill, disabled, on medication for various conditions; this move will be worse for them in many ways, as will the challenges of resettling in another facility. Of course, the closings also mean relocation, and possible job loss, for hundreds of staff, administrators, and corrections officers.
Warehousing the Mentally Ill
Leann Davis Alspaugh: In 2018, you wrote about serving with Andrew Goldstein in his last days in prison. Goldstein spent nineteen years in prison for the crime of pushing a young woman, Kendra Webdale, into the path of an oncoming subway train in 1999. In your wrenching 2018 New York Magazine essay, “A Turbulent Mind” (written with Bill Keller), you described Goldstein’s daily life, one dominated by a regimen of antipsychotic drugs that kept him nonviolent and compliant but also left him with a host of illnesses brought on by a lack of hygiene and a poor diet. As you wrote: “One reason so many of the desperately ill are in prisons is that prosecutors exercise their immense discretion in pursuit of victories, not treatment. If prosecutors had agreed to accept a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, Andrew would have been sent to a psychiatric facility instead of Sullivan, but prosecutors wanted a conviction. In any case, Andrew faced a Hobson’s choice—prison with a chance of freedom, or a more appropriate setting possibly for the rest of his life.” Psychoses are a feature of daily life in prison—some diagnosable, some behavioral. What do correctional officers face when it comes to handling mental illness within the prison population?
John J. Lennon: That ten of every eleven psychiatric patients housed by the government are incarcerated should jar everyone.33xJohn J. Lennon, “‘This Place Is Crazy,’” Esquire, June 5, 2018; https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a20717313/mental-illness-treatment-in-prison/. In 2022, I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times explaining how President Biden could use what I called a “hope and healing bill” to fix some of the damage caused by his 1994 crime bill. My proposal called for “more federal funding so that prisoners with mental health problems would be treated more humanely. It would also provide more vacation days for corrections officers and offer them resources to treat PTSD. They have a hard job, and it’s harder for them to treat us well if they are unwell themselves.”44xJohn J. Lennon, “I’ve Been Incarcerated for 21 Years. I Wish the Judge Could See Who I Am Today,” New York Times, May 5, 2022; https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/opinion/prison-reform-biden-pell-grant.html. While I was preparing that op-ed, I read a white paper published by an officer-wellness organization detailing the physical and psychological trauma endured by COs (correctional officers). Physical assault also has serious consequences outside prison, as this paper noted: “The violence in prisons haunts guards’ private lives. They begin to treat their family and friends like they treat convicts, lose their trust in people, and feel threatened on a daily basis. This behavior often leads to domestic violence, drug abuse, and feelings of guilt.”55x“I Am Not Okay,” white paper, One Voice Uniting Corrections, October 24, 2021; https://onevoiceunited.org/blog/i-am-not-okay-wellness-white-paper/. Quoted on page 17.
I’m not sure I’ve seen treatment improve in here. People who suffer from mental illness are generally ignored in prison until they become psychotic, and then they are isolated and sedated, and, sadly, sometimes beaten. It’s pretty much the same thing in society. People in New York City ignore the man ranting on the subway every day, until he becomes aggressive, and then the cops come take him away.
Second-Look Legislation Offers a Second Chance
LDA: As Bryan Stevenson, activist and author of Just Mercy, has pointed out, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” What would you want a judge to know about who you are now? About a year ago, you submitted a clemency package in which you described how you have changed and the process of rehabilitation you have undergone. How does the current system handle this stage of incarceration?
JJL: By now, Bryan Stevenson’s statement, while true, is also something of a cliché. Some people in prison who have done terrible things are still awful people. A guy a few cells down from me, a really miserable man, says he idolizes Timothy McVeigh. I’ve had men show me shanks with the tip dipped in shit, which they stash in some crevice of a radiator so that the bacteria stews. They do it so when they stab someone in the stomach, it will cause an infection and make them suffer and maybe die. There are sick people in prison. Believe that.
But sometimes it’s the grim prospect of the reality that you’re never getting out that makes prisoners feel hopeless, and of course that makes them dangerous. What’s a person to do, how is he to rediscover his identity and his humanity, if there is not even a path that he can take to earn a second chance? Look, sometimes people with no way out work on themselves and become better. Sometimes religion and some kind of disciplined routine or purpose can help. For me, it was thinking and writing and seeing my name in print.
When I think about who I was back in 2001, chained up, bussed to court from Rikers Island, trying to beat the rap, the murder trials (I had two, the first resulting in a hung jury)—I was the worst version of myself, and that was an awful period of my life. And, yes, there are so-called second-look laws being passed in certain states that give our sentencing courts, after prisoners serve a certain number of years, the discretion to assess who the person has become in prison. The states, one can argue, have taken the lead from the 2018 First Step Act,66xThe First Step Act, Federal Bureau of Prisons; https://www.bop.gov/inmates/fsa/index.jsp. The First Step Act was passed on December 18, 2018, and “requires the Attorney General to develop a risk and needs assessment system for Bureau of Prisons to assess the recidivism risk and criminogenic needs of all federal prisoners and to place prisoners in recidivism reducing programs and productive activities to address their needs and reduce this risk.” which gave federal judges the discretion to reduce the sentences of federal prisoners who were sentenced to life—notorious mobsters, for example, some responsible for multiple murders. In May 2024, The Sentencing Project reported on the second-look legislation as it exists in twelve states; New York has a limited second-look route for people who can show they suffered from domestic abuse.77x“The Second Look Movement: A Review of the Nation’s Sentence Review Laws,” The Sentencing Project, May 15, 2024; https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/the-second-look-movement-a-review-of-the-nations-sentence-review-laws/. But a regular convict like me can’t petition a judge to consider who I have become.
So if we believe we have made “extraordinary strides toward self-development,” as the suits say, the only route is to ask the governor for clemency.88xIn 2022, Lennon submitted a clemency application to the governor of New York to which this author and many other colleagues and friends contributed. But it’s a political process. Politicians are always gauging potential media blowback if they let a convicted murderer out early. I would like to hope that if I were granted clemency, I would be released having proven myself as a journalist and a member of the media, and the chance of negative reaction would be low.
What would I want the governor or a judge to know today? I believe you should judge character by action and the facts. That’s what they considered when they put me away. I was an out-of-control criminal with a ninth-grade education, few morals, and no character. Today, I would argue, my CV outshines that of most working journalists in the United States. Look at my service, my body of work, the people I have inspired across the nation to believe they can do this thing I do. There’s a renaissance of prison writing today, with millions of dollars coming off the sidelines to support infrastructures for prison writers. I advise some of these organizations. I built this career from the mud, in Attica—and you know this, Leann, because you helped me. When I think about what I did and the people I hurt, it’s writing—not therapy or programs—that has also pushed me to grapple with all that on the page. In my twenty-three years in prison, nobody who works for corrections ever had a conversation with me about my crime.
The Lost Generation
LDA: It is well known that prisoners who take advantage of educational opportunities are changed—I saw this at Sing Sing when I heard graduates describe how learning had taken them from being criminals to scholars. In December 2020, Congress lifted a twenty-six-year ban on Pell Grants for incarcerated students although funding was not available until 2023. What are the connections between education and hope for the future, for a changed life, especially among the incarcerated?
JJL: Prison is a disgusting and hopeless place. Still, there have been some changes over the years that have helped bring in hope. Here’s the backdrop: After the 1994 crime bill removed access to Pell Grants for prisoners, the next twenty-five years in here resembled what you’ve heard me refer to as a “lost generation.” But in 2015, Obama, in a nifty move under the Department of Education, implemented an experimental program, as a study, called Second Chance Pell. It planted the seed for potential change, providing partial funding for a limited number of college programs to come back into prisons. When Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education in 2016, I feared they would end the Obama college-in-prison experiment. They didn’t. Instead, in 2020, before he left office, Trump signed the omnibus COVID relief bill, which fully lifted the ban on federal college aid—Pell Grants—for all US prisoners. It totally changed the dynamic of the American prison. As I write this in my cell right now, men who are enrolled in college classes are hanging on their bars, talking about their final psychology paper and exchanging ideas on child development, gender, and nature versus nurture.
I’m not a fan of Trump, and I imagine he didn’t really know what was in the bill he was signing; I’m sure it was folks on the left who were pushing for Pell Grants to be restored. And yet I think it’s dishonest reporting when journalists don’t credit Trump for signing that bill and the First Step Act. I call out the progressive politicians who talk a big game and get nothing done on the criminal-justice front, at least on a federal level. Would President Biden have been able to reinstate Pell Grants for prisoners during his term? I don’t know. He did get several far-reaching pieces of legislation passed, but nothing substantial on the criminal-justice front that would have helped undo the harm caused by his 1994 crime bill.
The Cost of Censorship in Prison
LDA: In 2023, the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision issued a directive that drastically reduced what prison writers could publish and how much they could get paid. That directive was quickly rescinded, but its implications were disturbing. As you told New York Focus at the time, “In the absence of any restorative justice programming offered by corrections, that would help foster a dialogue between us and our victims, writing was the only opportunity for me to reflect on it at all.” If that directive had come along a few years earlier, you would not have been able to publish many pieces, among them “The Apology Letter” for the Washington Post Magazine (2019), in which you directly address your victim’s family and describe your own remorse. Such a directive might have prevented you from publishing articles on public issues such as education, relationships, recreation, the cost of housing for the newly released, and mental health, as well as those with personal insights into remorse, family, faith, and well-being. Why is censorship and a lack of free expression so damaging?
JJL: That prison directive was implemented by an outgoing commissioner. It conflicted with a 1991 Supreme Court decision (Simon & Schuster Inc. v. Members of New York State Crimes Victims Board), which ruled that the 1977 version of the “Son of Sam” law was inconsistent with the First Amendment. The court really had a problem with how the law forbade writers from discussing their crimes—even in the most minimal detail. “Had the ‘Son of Sam’ law been in effect at the time and place of publication,” the opinion reads, “it would have escrowed payment for such works as The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which describes crimes committed by the civil rights leader before he became a public figure….”99xSimon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of the New York State Victims Board, 502 US 105 (1991); https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/502/105/#tab-opinion-1958884. Many people erroneously believe this version of the “Son of Sam” law is still in effect. In 2001, New York revised the law but removed all the language about limiting what a convicted person can write about, and while a convicted person’s assets can be seized, they can’t touch “earned income”; in my case, as a prison journalist, this would have directly affected my earnings. If prison writers publish work that affects the security of a prison, they are likely to get into trouble with prison officials. But if that can’t be proven, a court would likely protect the First Amendment rights of the prison writer. So the briefly implemented directive echoed the early version of the “Son of Sam” law—it was unsound legally. However, once the New York Focus story broke, the public’s reaction was a testament to the widespread distaste for a prison system that tries to silence artists. I give the incoming commissioner credit for overturning the directive.
Censorship is a huge topic for organizations and journalists writing about prison. I mean, it’s a big discussion in society, too—which books should be accessible in public libraries and classrooms. In prison, I’ve found this topic to be less about idealism and more about inept bureaucrats and administrators who craft poorly written directives that result in books getting denied. Check it out: I host a nonfiction writing workshop in Sullivan Correctional Facility. When the new commissioner came in earlier this year, I asked for a classroom to work with the men I was mentoring—we were meeting anywhere we could, noisy cellblocks, outdoors in the yard—and he gave it to me. At my request, the Prison Journalism Project (I’m on the board of advisors) sent me ten copies of A Prison Writer’s Guide to Media Writing, a course guide. The administration has been holding up these books for months. [Printed materials must pass the administration’s media-review process before being passed on to prisoners.] We can get hardcore pornography magazines with no problems, but I can’t get a media-writing guide to teach my guys! I could embarrass the administration and write an op-ed, maybe in the Times, but then there goes my workshop, right? That would be selfish of me. If my intentions are really to help my peers and change lives, I have to temper my ego and personal ambitions. Truth is, building a relationship with the commissioner will help me effect change quicker than writing an op-ed criticizing his administration.
The heads of these agencies have a lot of power. Many activists forget that. With their poor messaging and talk of some kind of utopia of mutual collaboration, the activists invalidate people who work in prisons and, ultimately, ignore those who are really running prisons. That’s a serious misstep.
Where Does Rehabilitation Happen?
LDA: The public’s perception of law enforcement grows worse on the outside, so it can’t be much of a surprise that it is also bad on the inside. There are many factors: ill-prepared COs thrust in the role of mental-health caregivers, a history of violence and abuse between COs and prisoners, and a fundamental lack of trust between administration and population. Can you say more about approaches such as “dynamic security philosophy,” which seeks to encourage guards and prisoners to meet on a more equal basis, as opposed to the “static security philosophy” that it is mostly practiced in American prisons?
JJL: The reality is that there’s an invisible line that separates prisoners and staff in US prisons. No fraternization. Administrators make rounds, say something, perhaps, about obstructing the cell window, then sign a logbook. If you try to talk to them about a concern or need, they’ll tell you to write them a letter. For the past three years I’ve been in Sullivan, which is the smallest maximum-security facility in New York. I never once had a conversation with the superintendent until the commissioner told her to give me a classroom for a workshop. It was awkward. She told me that she’d never read anything I’d written. And she had been a teacher before she was a prison superintendent. I mean, can you imagine?
And that’s the problem in the American prison: indifference. And that’s not me taking her personal inventory. Unfortunately, as a superintendent, she works in a very tough environment that prioritizes security over anything else, and that surely affects her. And the prison population, especially at Sullivan, is damaged and suffering from addiction, mental illness, low IQ, hearing and visual impairment, age-related infirmities—she deals with all that ugly, day after day. Well, that can make you apathetic and indifferent.
Running a prison is not like running a private company. With the latter, the bottom line is profit, right? With a prison, well, we don’t really know what the bottom line is. And it’s a bit unfair, say, to look at the recidivism rates of people released from Sullivan, because many prisoners are never even getting out, or, if they do, they don’t leave from this prison; they get transferred in the interim to a medium-security prison. Still, each superintendent should know, off the cuff, who are the most influential prisoners in their facility. It’s the prisoners themselves who foster rehabilitation, not the staff. I have many men, serious men who have been shot-callers of gangs, who call me their mentor. Do you think those same men would ever call someone on the prison staff their mentor? Hell, no! I mean, the staff is who the taxpayers are paying to correct us, right? My point is, if you’re running a prison, you need to cultivate relationships with the most influential prisoners, but most superintendents don’t necessarily subscribe to that in the US.
That is an example of static security. Journalists and academics love to visit Europe and study their prisons, most of which practice the dynamic security philosophy, and compare them to our failing American prisons. They argue that here it’s all about race. In nations such as Norway or Finland, with relatively homogenous populations, they mostly lock up people who look like themselves, so the thinking goes that administrators find it easier to build relationships and treat their prisoners more humanely. Whereas we in the US disproportionately lock up people of color, and there’s a bit more of a cultural disconnect between the keepers (often white prison officials) and the kept. Others say that American crime, with all our guns and all our true-crime stories about murder, is much more violent and sensationalized, and that creates a thirst for punishment. Truth is, as I write this, murder rates are hovering at all-time lows in major US cities.
Words Matter
LDA: As a journalist who has been freelancing from prison for eleven years, you spend a lot of time searching for the right words. Let’s take a quick look at a few examples, such as abolition, criminal justice system versus criminal legal system, and how you describe yourself—prisoner, inmate, or incarcerated person.
JJL: Abolition is a word that’s been taken up by activists, pulled from a historical context and applied to the world of criminal justice. To what does it refer in the context of incarceration? Well, it refers to some lawmakers in the South who voted for punitive laws to send a disproportionate number of black and brown people to prison, and then, when these prisoners are released, claim they are ineligible for a host of benefits (subsidies to ease housing or drug treatment costs, for example). This tracks back to how their predecessors voted for Jim Crow laws, as Michelle Alexander argues in her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I mean, those punitive laws affected a lot of white people, too, which Alexander refers to as “collateral damage.” James Forman Jr. wrote a Pulitzer Prize–winning book [Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, 2018], noting that the number of white people incarcerated in the US amounts to a hell of a lot of collateral damage.
I do think mass incarceration tracks to our racist history, but I don’t generally agree with the approach of prison abolitionists. They can’t help us in here, because they are too critical of the system itself, so they can’t get into prisons. But they don’t really want to come in and help us build a better community in here. So what you have is a bunch of intellectuals who call themselves prison abolitionists, sitting around talking about a perfect world. It’s a beautiful idea, to fund poor communities with the kind of resources that will address the needs of black and brown people, ultimately reduce crime, and offer positive alternatives to prison. I get it. But how does that help us in here now? And, shockingly, some abolitionists are critical of people who do work to create a better environment for us in here, like the curated libraries that my friend Reginald Dwayne Betts installs in the living quarters in prisons—cellblocks, dorms—across the US with his nonprofit, Freedom Reads. (Full disclosure: I’m a literary ambassador for Freedom Reads.) [Betts served eight years for carjacking and is now a poet, prison reformer, legal scholar, and recipient of both the Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships.]
As for what I call myself, my ID card used to say “inmate,” and, a couple of years ago, they changed it to “incarcerated person.” I guess that sounds better to somebody. I think some words are stinging, but I really don’t subscribe to any of this progressive reform wordplay in my work. I’m a narrative journalist, so as a matter of style, I stay away from empty phrases like incarcerated person or carceral or intersectionality or toxic masculinity. This is the voiceless and dull writing of academics. They all sound like one another. By contrast, writing that explains those terms in the action of a character-driven story, with good scenes and details and dialogue—that writing is so much more effective, all around.
I prefer using “criminal justice system” over “criminal legal system.” Justice is arbitrary, without a doubt. Still, the term “criminal legal system” feels like a wink and a nod to other progressives and activists, signaling “I’m one of you.” And I don’t want the reader to categorize me. It’s not about being objective. I’m a first-person journalist who lives in a cell, and I empathize more with other people who live in cells, so I’m not objective. But I can still be a trusted guide.
I prefer “convict,” and “prisoner” is more muscular than “inmate.” The New York Times house style still uses “inmate,” but I’m not looking to fight with editors about it.
Making a Comeback
LDA: It could be said that reforming the criminal-justice system is something that has to happen before, during, and after incarceration. This is where the idea of programs comes in, whether therapeutic, behavioral, or practical. I know you are a believer in the effectiveness of twelve-step programs and have petitioned the administration when they are missing—such as at Sullivan. What could be done to deter crime? What can programs address on the inside? And how might programs aid in reentry?
JJL: Since you set this up as a sort of narrative arc, as I like to do in my writing, with a beginning, middle, and end, I’m going to follow your lead. With programs, you have to go back to before prison, as the abolitionists suggest, by creating more robust support in the most vulnerable communities. It’s true that you don’t see too many people in prison who come from a solid upbringing with stable families and communities with money. This brings up the perennial question of society versus individual, nature versus nurture. As in life, it is neither one nor the other. I grew up in a housing project in Hell’s Kitchen, my dad killed himself, my mom was a bit wacky—but I had plenty of help along the way, scholarships to private schools and a Jewish family who mentored me. But I rejected all of it and ran the streets. And I got everything that The Life had to offer.
So when you find yourself, as I did, in Attica, serving twenty-eight years to life, there is a sad self-realization, if you choose to be honest with yourself, that your own decisions played a major part in why you’re there. I cringe at this idea of blaming my mom or society for where I am. That’s not the yarn I’m looking to spin. Look, some of us are late bloomers. And it’s a powerful moment when you say to yourself in your cell, “Man, wouldn’t that be something if I made a comeback!”
You soon realize that the opportunities to help you change are scarce. And you go through these stages of blaming the system for not helping you. But if you’re lucky, you get past that and find your passion. Attica is where I got sober in a twelve-step meeting and started working on myself. It’s where I learned my craft in a creative-writing workshop. Those are volunteer programs—people come into the prison from the outside and volunteer to mentor or teach. I never got anything out of programs that the system told me I had to take, like anger-replacement training that teaches imagining pleasant thoughts and counting backwards. Nobody wants to be in those sessions, but you have to complete them for parole consideration.
Besides the college programs, there really are no solid programs that allow us a safe place to reflect and build relationships with one another. Of course, the drama and music programs at Sing Sing, including my writing workshop, are exceptions, but space to participate in programs like these is limited, and you have to hang around with the right group of guys to get these opportunities. I was lucky to get into that writing workshop in Attica—I often wonder what would have become of my life if I hadn’t.
When I left Attica, I realized the other prisons I served time in, including Sullivan, didn’t allow Alcoholics Anonymous volunteers. But you can get all the hooch and all the drugs you want in here. Just recently, the commissioner, as I mentioned, gave me the writing workshop. Everyone wants to be there, and it’s not to get some letter for parole.
Some guys in my workshop won’t ever see a parole board. They will die in prison. So it’s really an individual path. I mean, when I came to prison, the path I was heading down was dead-or-in-jail. One can make the argument that as bad as prison is it seems to have saved me. True. Did I really have to kill a man and come to prison to find my talent as a writer? This is my constant conflict. It’s triumphant and tormenting. But I’m not in the business of reforming prisons. I’m in the business of telling stories. I mentor men because it feels good to see them beam with healthy pride when they get published. I learned how to be decent to my peers because people like you, and several others, were decent to me along the way.
As for release and reentry, no doubt it will be a challenge. Like all the other things I write about—my life in prison, reflections of my past—I look forward to tapping into reentry with all of its excitement and uncertainty. I have a list of story ideas that I’ve been assembling in a notebook. I’m in a good position for reentry. I have money, fellowships, and a vast network of resources, a book coming out. In the neighborhood I left twenty-three years ago—Williamsburg, Brooklyn—where I killed a man, there are a bunch of writers who probably wish they had the clips and contacts I’ve made from a prison cell. I suppose there will be some tension there, as there should be. At this point—I’m not saying it because it’s the thing to say—but I do feel blessed and grateful. I do feel pressure and a bit of fear. But I’ll be okay.