Prison and Re-Entry

Malory Claremont's story (or part of it, anyhow!) is up for grabs now--Re-Entry Burn lives!

Cover by Natasha Snow

For excerpts, check out its page here at the blog. To dive right in, you can get it from LT3 or any of these fine vendors!

This book took me a relatively long time to write, y'all. Of the first four Superpowered Love books, only Losing Better required some research on my part. Luckily I had a buddy who helped me out with that FBI stuff. She also helped me with the prison stuff, for Malory, but to get inside his head and what he'd been through on the inside, I read. And read. And read.

And what I discovered was awful. Fyodor Dostoevsky famously wrote, "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." Let me tell you, friends, the United States has some serious work to do. 

If you're interested in learning more, there have been some recent documentaries that shine a light on specific occurrences--much easier than reading a bunch of books by ex-offenders that will make you lose your faith in humanity forever. Try these two on Netflix:

-The Survivor's Guide to Prison: A documentary framed like practical advice to anyone about to enter the justice system. Some famous people with experience, like the ever-awesome Danny Trejo, hammer away with stories, tips and tricks. It ends up focusing on the story of two wrongly convicted men, but the fact that they were innocent and subjected to this system is just the icing on the cake. No one should be.

-Time: The Kalief Browder Story: Want to rage-cry for an hour or two? Watch this one. Kalief Browder was (wrongly) indicted for stealing a backpack, and spent 3 years in Riker's Island AWAITING TRIAL. Yeah, he wasn't even convicted of anything. And it didn't get better. Jay-Z won a Peabody for this six-episode miniseries. 

Trigger warnings abound for all of these: violence, law enforcement, suicide, rape, just the ones I'm coming up with off the top of my head. 

Obviously I don't claim to have represented this stuff well or thoroughly in Re-entry Burn. It's a romance novel about two ex-offenders, not an exploration of the prison system. But if the story piques your interest, there's a lot to discover and learn about the criminal justice system. Which, honestly, I do believe in--but it's far from perfect and we can do better.

Okay off my soapbox, I just wanted to say that.