Search Results for: Prison

Designer Shades, Quiet Hustle: The Entrepreneurs of the New York City Homeless Shelter

Longreads Pick

It’s a secret because homelessness is the one condition they find shameful. An inner-city hustler’s entire life is devoted to either rising above his station or projecting the illusion of same. So when the drug abuse or prison term or unemployability send him into the street, he needs a hiding place. Homeless shelters are a place for him to hide his shame. What I discovered at various shelters in New York City is that they are also the place where hustling goes into overdrive.

Published: May 13, 2011
Length: 7 minutes (1,812 words)

Of Murder and Moving On

Longreads Pick

More than three decades ago, these murders shook Wyoming’s blue skies and open spirit. He admitted to committing them, testified against a man later given a death sentence and — poof — vanished into prison under an alias. Now, people were saying he had come home. Hard, unanswered questions circled the rumor. So not long after spring broke this year, a knock on his door. No response.

Published: May 1, 2011
Length: 8 minutes (2,061 words)

The Making and Remaking of Malcolm X

Longreads Pick

Alex Haley sat at a desk typing notes while Malcolm—tall, austere, dressed always in a dark suit, a white shirt, and a narrow dark tie—drank cup after cup of coffee, paced the room, and talked. What emerged was the hegira of Malcolm’s life as a black man in mid-century America: his transformation from Malcolm Little, born in Omaha to troubled parents whose salve against racist harassment and violence was the black-nationalist creed of Marcus Garvey; to Detroit Red, a numbers-running hustler on the streets of Boston and New York; to a convicted felon known among fellow-prisoners as Satan; to Malcolm X, a charismatic deputy to the Nation of Islam’s leader, Elijah Muhammad, and the most electrifying proponent of black nationalism alive.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Apr 18, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,981 words)

The Madoff Tapes

The Madoff Tapes

The Madoff Tapes

Longreads Pick

One evening a few weeks ago, my home phone rang. “You have a collect call from Bernard Madoff, an inmate at a federal prison,” a recorded message announced. Out of nowhere, there was that accent, familiar to anyone who’s visited Queens. Madoff apologized for calling collect. “I don’t have that much money in my commissary account,” he told me, before starting on a remarkable conversation that would stretch to several hours in more than a dozen phone calls. This being Bernie Madoff, in dollar terms the greatest criminal in history, I didn’t know what to believe. But I listened.

Published: Feb 28, 2011
Length: 31 minutes (7,951 words)

The Someone You’re Not

Longreads Pick

Our packed prisons are starting to disgorge hundreds of mostly African-America men who, over the last few decades, we wrongly convicted of violent crimes. This is what it’s like to spend nearly thirty years in prison for something you didn’t do. This is what it’s like to spend nearly thirty years as someone you aren’t. And for Ray Towler, this is what it’s like to be free.

Author: Mike Sager
Source: Esquire
Published: Feb 24, 2011
Length: 29 minutes (7,465 words)

The Life and Death of Blago Aide Christopher Kelly

The Life and Death of Blago Aide Christopher Kelly

The Life and Death of Blago Aide Christopher Kelly

Longreads Pick

(City Magazine (CRMA) Award nominee.) “He was part of [Blagojevich’s] inner, inner circle, about as close to the sun as you can get.” Those days were gone. Now Kelly was holing up on and off in this trailer near 173rd and Cicero. His marriage was on the rocks—he was shacking up in a downtown condo with his girlfriend, Clarissa Flores-Buhelos, a married woman two decades his junior. The feds had indicted him three times in two years; he had pleaded guilty twice, and he was slated to go on trial with his old pal Blagojevich on the third set of charges. A decade or more of prison loomed. In fact, Kelly was expected to turn himself in within a few days. “My life is over,” he had admitted to reporters four days earlier, in a rare unguarded moment before the press.

Published: May 1, 2010
Length: 27 minutes (6,925 words)

When Irish Eyes Are Crying

When Irish Eyes Are Crying

A Basketball Carol

A Basketball Carol