Corrections in Ink: A Memoir

by Keri Blakinger

I was back “on the draft,” New York prison slang for being transferred. There were six possibilities for where female prisoners could end up: shock, Beacon, Bayview, Bedford, Taconic, or Albion. I already knew shock was out, and Beacon was off the table because it was a minimum-security camp and didn’t allow people on psych meds. Bayview was the only prison in Manhattan, so it was usually New York City folk who ended up there. Bedford—which had the best reputation—was a max and usually reserved for people with a long time left on their sentences, the sort most likely to settle in and avoid trouble. Taconic, the smaller, medium-security facility across the street, was the only place I’d heard nothing about except that a hundred years earlier it was a reformatory for the “mentally defective.” The biggest prison, and the one with the worst reputation for drama, was Albion. That was where I ended up. As the other women explained, people “jail hard up there.” It wasn’t just the prisoners jailing hard; it was the staff, too. Albion had a reputation for making liberal use of solitary confinement and turning every little thing into an infraction of some kind. We nicknamed the place Ticketmaster because the guards wrote so many disciplinary tickets, for such absurd things: wearing pajamas during the day, loitering on the walkway, not standing during count. And, as a Black woman who’d been there before explained while we boarded the draft bus to head back, Albion was a particularly ...