Vanessa was deprived of her hormones in prison and thus retained several male characteristics that would have been less evident otherwise, most notably her voice. While she spoke in a high, little-girl voice most of...

In order for prisons to truly serve the public, the people who run them would do well to aspire to the words of Thomas Mott Osborne, the storied warden of New York’s Sing Sing Prison...

If I could forgive, it meant I was a strong good person who could take responsibility for the path I had chosen for myself, and all the consequences that accompanied that choice. And it gave...

Do you have to find the evil in yourself in order to truly recognize it in the world?

When you are deep in misery, you reach out to those who can help, people who can understand.

Great institutions have leaders who are proud of what they do, and who engage with everyone who makes up those institutions, so each person understands their role. But our jailers are generally granted near-total anonymity,...

We have a racially based justice system that overpunishes, fails to rehabilitate, and doesn’t make us safer.

Maybe, because all these good people loved me enough to help me, maybe I wasn’t quite as bad as I felt. Maybe there was a part of me that was worthy of their love.

We were never friends. Not for a second. I loved you.