The Beat Within

by Harry C. Goodall I’ll never forget the rst time I saw my daughter. I knew her mother was pregnant but never knew whether she actually had the baby or not. It was a woman I met while selling drugs in another state. I was told that she left Washington and moved to Kansas. That was the end of what I knew about the pregnancy. My stay in that state ended with me coming back to California and getting a parole violation and another year in a California prison. The next time I heard of her was when my friend

by Dortell Williams If you’re anything like me, you’ve made some mistakes and even bad decisions. I am a man of many regrets, but someone once told me that it isn’t where you’ve been, but where you are going that counts. It’s true. No matter what we done in the past, as regrettable as it may be, we are like books – waiting for that next chapter to be written. The great thing is that we are the authors of our own books. What is said in each chapter is up to us. One decision at a time each its

by Keith Erickson The scars of my childhood are the very parts of me that so many men like me, incarcerated men, want to keep locked away from the rest of the world around them. The Alternatives to Violence Project Workshops bring out the courage in men that you would never expect to witness within a prison. This weekend was like a whirlwind of emotions and laughter that left many of us crying, yet with the realization that our personal af ictions are so much bigger than just ourselves—they also belong to so many others within and outside of these