Corrections in Ink: A Memoir

by Keri Blakinger

But the woman next me in the draft line got that—not the specifics, necessarily, but the generalities. And she also understood what it meant: If you put prisons in a place where it’s harder for Black and brown people to do time, and they get written up more often, then they’ll go to solitary more often, and it’ll be harder to get out because they won’t be able to make parole. A sprawling New York Times investigation laid these connections bare in 2016, with data analyses proving the disciplinary infractions and parole approvals, and deep reporting linking it to the makeup of the staff and the parole board members. At one upstate unit—the Clinton men’s prison near the Canadian border—reporters found that only one of the 998 guards was Black, that Black prisoners were almost four times as likely to get sent to solitary, and that they spent on average thirty-five more days there than white prisoners. And since disciplinary records are a huge factor in parole decisions, Black inmates unsurprisingly made their first shot at parole less frequently.