While serving a sentence of 28-years-to-life in New York State prisons for killing a rival drug supplier, John J. Lennon has printed works of journalism in a variety of mainstream publications, together with The Marshall Challenge. His first guide, “The Tragedy of True Crime: 4 Responsible Males and the Tales That Outline Us,” newly printed by Celadon Books, examines firsthand the circumstances of 4 killers — together with Lennon himself — to chop by means of the sensationalism and reveal the humanity of the folks behind bars. He’s at present residing in Sing Sing jail, and can change into eligible for parole in 2029.
Invoice Keller is the founding editor of The Marshall Challenge, and the writer of “What’s Jail For: Punishment and Rehabilitation within the Age of Mass Incarceration.”
Their dialog, carried out through electronic mail, has been edited for size and readability.
Invoice Keller: Jail newspapers have been round for a very long time — reportedly for the reason that debtors’ prisons of the nineteenth century. However incarcerated journalists who work as unbiased freelancers, with out the assist of a licensed publication, are a comparatively latest pattern.
John J. Lennon: For a lot of the twentieth century, most prisons had a newspaper, and each time a jailhouse journalist gained notoriety, it was for his or her writing in these papers. Wilbert Rideau was maybe probably the most well-known jail journalist. He edited and wrote articles for The Angolite, a newsmagazine that operated in Louisiana’s Angola jail. Its greatest work was on the tail finish of the rehabilitative period of American corrections. Rideau’s success got here, largely, from a singular relationship he had with the jail warden who would go on to run the entire jail system within the state. By the ‘90s, a extra punitive period started, and a lot of the nation’s jail presses glided by the wayside.
The Angolite continues to be operating at the moment, however it’s extremely censored. San Quentin, the notorious jail in California, has the San Quentin Information, the “Ear Hustle” podcast, and a media lab, the place individuals get pleasure from a collegial setting, computer systems, and may stroll the ability. Few prisons in America supply something like this, however what I’ve discovered through the years from speaking to a few of San Quentin’s greatest writers — Juan Moreno Haines and Rahsaan Thomas and Joe Garcia — is that they most popular to publish tales in exterior newspapers and magazines, to achieve greater audiences, work with skilled editors, rack up clips for his or her CVs, and to save cash for his or her return. (Writing for the San Quentin Information earned them about $16 per week.)
I’d have by no means change into a journalist if I had waited for Attica or Sing Sing to start out a newspaper. The artistic writing workshop I attended in Attica, taught by a Hamilton School professor named Doran Larson, confirmed me what good writing regarded like. However it was solely after I began working with professionals, such as you and different editors, that I used to be capable of higher develop an eye fixed for story and perceive the significance of construction and learn to stability my very own voice in reported tales. Crucial a part of constructing a profession as a journalist on the within is constructing group with folks — editors, writers, anybody within the literary area — on the skin.
Are there issues about jail that inside journalists get that exterior journalists are inclined to overlook or misunderstand?
Positive. However it’s not their fault. They lack entry, each bodily and private. They will solely hearken to what a topic, maybe a prisoner they go to or discuss to over the cellphone for a narrative, is telling them. They will’t see the motion on the bottom, seize the topic in first-person scenes, observe their routines and the way they exist on this world. They will’t really feel this world themselves or seize the senses. In fact, conventional reporters can ask their topics to explain jail or their backstories, after which they’ll reconstruct these scenes.
As for the private entry, common reporters can’t enter the narrative within the first particular person “I.” They don’t know the way it feels to exist in jail emotionally. Although they could not intend to, many legal justice journalists hover from ethical perches once they write about individuals who kill. It’s an ethical superiority they’ll’t keep away from, which is why a few of these reporters don’t embrace their topics’ crimes, which may be problematic. Identical to true crime creators carry a selected agenda to their work — that we’re all evil, and embrace egregious details to make sure their audiences agree — legal justice reporters usually do the other. They wish to spotlight the injustices of the system or make the case for reforms, and to persuade their readers, they exclude details about our crimes.
I’d prefer to suppose my work lands someplace within the center. I remorse and have regret for murdering a person, however I additionally use this unlucky id — assassin — as a literary device. I’m capable of write about very difficult characters, different murderers, and put myself beneath them by telling the reader about my very own horrible transgressions, usually explaining that I’m as unhealthy or worse than the folks I’m writing about. I imagine this enables the reader to higher see and really feel for my topics.
Journalists within the free world take it without any consideration that they’ll choose up the phone or discover the web to analysis a narrative and examine details. Incarcerated reporters normally have extraordinarily restricted entry to these primary sources. How do you address these handicaps?
I imply, I don’t prefer to whine about what I don’t have. Journalists up to now did wonderful work with a pen and pad and good narrative expertise. Plus, I’ve by no means recognized a life with know-how. I’ve been locked up for twenty-four years, and earlier than that I used to be a legal; I by no means typed an electronic mail or used a pc. To be a journalist on the within, it’s essential construct relationships with folks on the skin. So, technically, I do use know-how — I get loads of articles for analysis, conduct interviews with specialists and even politicians exterior, that are all recorded and transcribed by AI — however it’s all achieved by means of proxies, like my longtime guide publicist, Megan Posco, and my analysis assistant, Matt Litman. They then mail the articles and transcripts to me in jail, 5 pages at a time. I even have a bunch of print subscriptions, and though I can’t see online-only content material, Megan will print out items she thinks I’ll discover attention-grabbing and ship them to me. In 2019, we obtained digital tablets from Securus, a for-profit communications firm [The Marshall Project’s News Inside and Inside Story are distributed on Securus tablets in prisons and jails]. On these units, we are able to entry instructional content material and podcasts, make cellphone calls, sort messages, and lower and paste within the draft perform. It’s how I’m thumb-tapping the solutions to those questions proper now.
You’re employed in a high-risk setting, dwelling in shut proximity to sources and topics. The tradition of jail shouldn’t be particularly pleasant to individuals who pry or share secrets and techniques. Do you typically face reprisals?
I’ve been a contract journalist from jail for the previous 12 years, and I’ve had some bushy conditions — guards tossing my cell, convicts plotting to extort me — alongside the way in which. There was no script on how to do that, and I wasn’t doing journalism as a part of a jail newspaper. I used to be publishing in magazines and incomes revenue. Typically individuals who lived right here and labored right here didn’t like that my tales illuminated the darkish corners of this place: the beatings guards issued in Attica or the sports activities betting scene in Sing Sing. In 2020, I printed a chunk in Sports activities Illustrated. It was about jail bookies and bettors; I took readers to the sidelines of Sing Sing on soccer Sunday. I modified a lot of the names within the piece. When it got here out within the Tremendous Bowl difficulty, a variety of guys learn it in right here, and a few politicked me for revealing an excessive amount of. Nothing a lot got here of it, although, till, just a few months later, I used to be moved to a special cellblock, the place I didn’t have many allies. A fella, armed with a knife, approached me within the yard and claimed my story had brought on him and his crew a loss. (When it got here out, guards raided the cell of a man holding their stash, he informed me, and he blamed me, as a result of the man shared the identical made-up nickname I used for the bookie in my story.) He mentioned I needed to pay as much as make it proper. Extortion 101: Make the mark suppose he’s achieved one thing mistaken, one thing solely his cash could make proper. I’m in jail for killing a former buddy who was shaking down one in every of my drug sellers, so responding the identical manner would recommend I hadn’t modified. And reality is, whenever you develop up emotionally and intellectually, you lose that impulsive edge. Now, I’m extra contemplative. I had somebody from the skin name the administration, and I used to be transferred. However that violated the jail code.
Lately, my repertoire has mellowed. I’ve pivoted to writing extra true crime criticism essays and character-driven tales that subvert the standard true crime style. And that’s what I did in “The Tragedy of True Crime.”
How would you clarify the increase in true-crime narratives?
Who is aware of what the true catalyst for the true crime increase was. Some folks imagine it started with “Serial,” Sarah Koenig’s massively widespread public radio podcast sequence, however I’m unsure that’s proper. That present set off the narrative podcasting increase, however “Serial” was a “true innocence” story, which is a subgenre of true crime, and in the event you ask Sarah Koenig why she informed the story, she’ll probably say that it was to uncover a possible injustice. Probably the most damaging true crime story is the sort that rehashes terrible violence for pure leisure. And this fashion of true crime took off just a few years after “Serial.” With that in thoughts, I do surprise if audiences had been getting bored with a variety of activist legal justice writing: Villains grew to become victims, and all people appeared to sound like each other, utilizing woke buzzwords, attempting to evoke disgrace in readers.
With true crime narratives, they’re much less demanding, intellectually, and in the long run, I think about, the viewers feels higher about dwelling with their very own secrets and techniques. All of us have them.
At night time in my cell, I attempt to learn earlier than I fall asleep. I learn a variety of characteristic journal tales — the sort I write — and I’ve been making my manner by means of the options that had been nominated for the Pulitzer; Megan mails me them yearly. I used to be just lately moving into the piece Joe Sexton wrote for The Marshall Challenge, concerning the child Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland, Florida shooter. The piece explores the concept of mitigation, however actually, it’s about these deep themes of punishment and forgiveness. Ought to this child be spared the loss of life penalty? It’s a narrative that requires a variety of ethical grappling for the reader, and it’s virtually an excessive amount of.
I ultimately turned on the TV, and I bought sucked into this “Dateline” rerun a few fella I do know who locks on the tier beneath me, and it was about how he killed his spouse and took her cash, and manipulated his youngsters into believing she slipped within the tub and it was all an accident. After watching it, I noticed him as a foul dude, nothing else, and it was weirdly soothing, as a result of although I’m a assassin, too, I felt higher than him. And I turned off the tube and went to sleep.
Even for me, one in every of true crime’s largest skeptics, it was simpler to zone out to those lurid narratives than preserve studying a chunk that was difficult me. I wrote “The Tragedy of True Crime” as a result of I needed to inform a special story concerning the responsible. I’d prefer to suppose the story I inform is extra illuminating, not solely as a result of I am a narrator with this regrettable company, however as a result of I can examine our truths and our motivations, with out doing it from an ethical perch.
There’s some new publishing infrastructure — The Marshall Challenge, the Jail Journalism Challenge, Pen America’s Jail and Justice Writing program — that has made writing from jail extra seen.
An increasing number of jail journalists are breaking into the mainstream, too. Two males I mentor, Joseph Sanchez and Robert Lee Williams, have printed in The New York Occasions. Christopher Blackwell, who’s serving time in Washington state and began touchdown huge items in 2020, has printed in The Washington Publish and The New York Occasions, and his activism has spurred coverage change. Equally, Kwaneta Harris, who writes from a Texas jail, has printed items in Teen Vogue and Rolling Stone. Once we hear from these voices firsthand, I’d prefer to suppose it impacts readers.
In Might 2023, New York jail officers applied a directive that prohibited incarcerated artwork makers and freelancers from submitting their work to exterior publications with out first getting permission from the ability superintendent. A reporter from New York Focus, which covers coverage, informed me concerning the new directive, which apparently hadn’t but taken impact. I informed him that I assumed the brand new rule was opposite to established regulation and inconsistent with the First Modification. As quickly because the story ran, it went viral, and the directive was rescinded. Later that month, when The New York Occasions profiled New York Focus, they acknowledged their glorious reportage and in addition famous that, on this second, “jail writing has reached a brand new visibility.”
What’s been probably the most gratifying response you’ve needed to one thing you wrote from jail?
I’ve been studying many heat and considerate critiques of my guide from writers I like, however typically probably the most shifting phrases come from fellow jail writers. I just lately bought a message from a person named Dan Grote, a author who’s locked up in Pennsylvania. He requested an editor I do know to share it with me.
“I’ve been in a foul, bleak place, and I wanted to learn ‘The Tragedy of True Crime.’ I wanted to see whether it is, certainly, doable for a convict to change into one thing greater than the entire of his errors with little greater than a pencil, some phrases, and a objective to pencil a satisfying ending to a narrative everybody has written off.”
I imply, what else might I ask for?
Yeah, that makes a fairly nice blurb.
