Four Decades Later, Teenaged Killer is Paroled, and Deported

The day this article appeared the last letter of my decade  long prison correspondence with Dempsey Hawkins, with the few dollars I could spare towards his first days of freedom, was returned to me: addressee no longer here.  After 39 years my pal is no longer penned. Crime Scene By MICHAEL WILSON JAN. 29, 2017 […]

Letter from Prison by Dempsey Hawkins

Rehabilitation.  Deterrence.  Retribution.  The words reverberate throughout every criminal courtroom in America the moment the judge strikes his or her gravel.  Three words with which I have become quite familiar during my imprisonment.  While the justice system once held fast to the faith in rehabilitation, tough on crime political agendas intersected with the wasting winds […]

Letters to Prison

Over the past year, Michael Wilson, the New York Times crime reporter, has been writing about my pen-itentiary pal, Dempsey Hawkins.  We have been corresponding since ’06, when Herb Boyd’s article on Jumel Terrace Books appeared in The Amsterdam News and brought me several correspondances from inmates, Dempsey’s being the only to sustain.  As family […]