While serving a sentence of 28-years-to-life in New York State prisons for killing a rival drug supplier, John J. Lennon has revealed works of journalism in a variety of mainstream publications, together with The Marshall Venture. His first e-book, “The Tragedy of True Crime: 4 Responsible Males and the Tales That Outline Us,” newly revealed 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 Venture, and the creator of “What’s Jail For: Punishment and Rehabilitation within the Age of Mass Incarceration.”
Their dialog, performed through electronic mail, has been edited for size and readability.
Invoice Keller: Jail newspapers have been round for a very long time — reportedly because the debtors’ prisons of the nineteenth century. However incarcerated journalists who work as impartial freelancers, with out the help of a licensed publication, are a comparatively current development.
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 finest 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 many of the nation’s jail presses glided by the wayside.
The Angolite continues to be working right now, but it surely’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 contributors take pleasure in a collegial surroundings, computer systems, and might stroll the power. Few prisons in America provide something like this, however what I’ve discovered through the years from speaking to a few of San Quentin’s finest writers — Juan Moreno Haines and Rahsaan Thomas and Joe Garcia — is that they most popular to publish tales in exterior newspapers and magazines, to succeed in larger audiences, work with skilled editors, rack up clips for his or her CVs, and to economize for his or her return. (Writing for the San Quentin Information earned them about $16 every week.)
I might have by no means change into a journalist if I had waited for Attica or Sing Sing to begin a newspaper. The artistic writing workshop I attended in Attica, taught by a Hamilton School professor named Doran Larson, confirmed me what good writing seemed like. Nevertheless it was solely after I began working with professionals, such as you and different editors, that I used to be in a position to higher develop a watch for story and perceive the significance of construction and discover ways to stability my very own voice in reported tales. A very powerful a part of constructing a profession as a journalist on the within is constructing group with folks — editors, writers, anybody within the literary house — on the skin.
Are there issues about jail that inside journalists get that exterior journalists are likely to overlook or misunderstand?
Certain. Nevertheless it’s not their fault. They lack entry, each bodily and private. They’ll solely take heed to what a topic, maybe a prisoner they go to or speak to over the cellphone for a narrative, is telling them. They’ll’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’ll’t really feel this world themselves or seize the senses. After all, conventional reporters can ask their topics to explain jail or their backstories, after which they’ll reconstruct these scenes.
As for the non-public entry, common reporters can’t enter the narrative within the first individual “I.” They don’t know the way it feels to exist in jail emotionally. Though they might not intend to, many felony 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 embody their topics’ crimes, which could be problematic. Similar to true crime creators deliver a selected agenda to their work — that we’re all evil, and embody egregious details to make sure their audiences agree — felony justice reporters usually do the alternative. They need 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 assume my work lands someplace within the center. I remorse and have regret for murdering a person, however I additionally use this unlucky identification — assassin — as a literary device. I’m in a position to write about very sophisticated characters, different murderers, and put myself beneath them by telling the reader about my very own horrible transgressions, usually explaining that I’m as dangerous or worse than the folks I’m writing about. I imagine this permits the reader to raised see and really feel for my topics.
Journalists within the free world take it without any consideration that they’ll decide up the phone or discover the web to analysis a narrative and verify details. Incarcerated reporters often have extraordinarily restricted entry to these fundamental assets. How do you address these handicaps?
I imply, I don’t prefer to whine about what I don’t have. Journalists previously did high quality work with a pen and pad and good narrative abilities. Plus, I’ve by no means identified a life with know-how. I’ve been locked up for twenty-four years, and earlier than that I used to be a felony; I by no means typed an electronic mail or used a pc. To be a journalist on the within, you should construct relationships with folks on the skin. So, technically, I do use know-how — I get loads of articles for analysis, conduct interviews with consultants and even politicians exterior, that are all recorded and transcribed by AI — but it surely’s all accomplished by means of proxies, like my longtime e-book 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 despite the fact that 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 acquired 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, kind messages, and reduce 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 surroundings, dwelling in shut proximity to sources and topics. The tradition of jail is just not particularly pleasant to individuals who pry or share secrets and techniques. Do you generally 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 earnings. Generally 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 revealed a bit 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 many of the names within the piece. When it got here out within the Tremendous Bowl subject, a number 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, a couple of 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 triggered him and his crew a loss. (When it got here out, guards raided the cell of a man holding their stash, he instructed 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 assume he’s accomplished one thing unsuitable, one thing solely his cash could make proper. I’m in jail for killing a former buddy who was shaking down one among my drug sellers, so responding the identical means would counsel I hadn’t modified. And reality is, once 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.
In recent times, my repertoire has mellowed. I’ve pivoted to writing extra true crime criticism essays and character-driven tales that subvert the normal 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 vastly common public radio podcast sequence, however I’m undecided 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 when you ask Sarah Koenig why she instructed the story, she’ll seemingly 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 a couple of years after “Serial.” With that in thoughts, I do surprise if audiences have been getting bored with a number of activist felony justice writing: Villains turned victims, and everyone appeared to sound like each other, utilizing woke buzzwords, making an attempt to evoke disgrace in readers.
With true crime narratives, they’re much less demanding, intellectually, and ultimately, I think about, the viewers feels higher about dwelling with their very own secrets and techniques. All of us have them.
At evening in my cell, I attempt to learn earlier than I fall asleep. I learn a number of characteristic journal tales — the sort I write — and I’ve been making my means by means of the options that have been nominated for the Pulitzer; Megan mails me them yearly. I used to be not too long ago stepping into the piece Joe Sexton wrote for The Marshall Venture, in regards to the child Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland, Florida shooter. The piece explores the thought 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 number of ethical grappling for the reader, and it’s nearly an excessive amount of.
I ultimately turned on the TV, and I received 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 children 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 among true crime’s greatest skeptics, it was simpler to zone out to those lurid narratives than maintain studying a bit that was difficult me. I wrote “The Tragedy of True Crime” as a result of I wished to inform a special story in regards to the responsible. I’d prefer to assume 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 Venture, the Jail Journalism Venture, Pen America’s Jail and Justice Writing program — that has made writing from jail extra seen.
Increasingly more jail journalists are breaking into the mainstream, too. Two males I mentor, Joseph Sanchez and Robert Lee Williams, have revealed in The New York Occasions. Christopher Blackwell, who’s serving time in Washington state and began touchdown huge items in 2020, has revealed in The Washington Submit and The New York Occasions, and his activism has spurred coverage change. Equally, Kwaneta Harris, who writes from a Texas jail, has revealed items in Teen Vogue and Rolling Stone. After we hear from these voices firsthand, I’d prefer to assume it impacts readers.
In Could 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 power superintendent. A reporter from New York Focus, which covers coverage, instructed me in regards to the new directive, which apparently hadn’t but taken impact. I instructed him that I believed the brand new rule was opposite to established legislation 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 likewise 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 evaluations of my e-book from writers I love, however generally probably the most transferring phrases come from fellow jail writers. I not too long ago received 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 nasty, 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 whole 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 may I ask for?
Yeah, that makes a fairly nice blurb.
