Dyego M. Foddrell

The New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) is not in the business of rehabilitation. The question is: Can society afford for it not to be? Those of us who hope to one day reenter society cannot, and do not, expect others to be more invested in our change than we are. Coming into the twenty-fourth year of a twenty-five-years-to-life sentence, I’ve been desperately pursuing my own rehabilitation. I cannot go back to society in the same condition that I entered the system.

Two years ago, I sat in a classroom with nine men incarcerated for violent crimes. I’m one of them—I’m serving a sentence of 25 to life for murder. In 2023, the now-shuttered Sullivan Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in New York State, started a pilot program called Trauma Addiction Mental-health and Recovery (TAMAR). I was hoping the class might help me resolve some childhood issues. This is where I first got to know Rashon Venable.

I’ve been in one type of state-run institution or another since the age of 12. As a child, my behavior was so bad that my family would tell me I wasn’t going to make it to see 25. They weren’t completely wrong. Now, at the age of forty-three, the majority of my life has been spent behind bars. It’s not the death my family predicted, but it sure isn’t living. As a juvenile, I served five years for armed robbery. As an adult, I did another three years for the same thing.