Onyx reviews: Corrections in Ink by Keri Blakinger

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 6/13/2022

I first became aware of Keri Blakinger when she reported on the damaged Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas for the Houston Chronicle in August 2017. The plant had lost power due to Hurricane Harvey and was threatening to explode—which it ultimately did. Her reporting stood out, and I began to notice her name on other articles for that paper.

At some point, I also learned about her backstory. She had been a figure skater in high school, going to Nationals on more than one occasion, and was accepted by Cornell. However, all that ground to a halt. She attempted suicide and was later arrested while high and in possession of six ounces of heroin. Although she had skated past any number of possible run-ins with the law in the past, this time she ended up in jail and, subsequently in prison, for two years. While incarcerated, she managed to get clean (that isn't a given in prison) and, on the recommendation of a fellow inmate, began journaling her experiences.

She converted her prison journal into a no-holds-barred memoir, revealing her struggle with bullying, depression, self-mutilation, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, and her turbulent pathway into heroin addiction. She spent her first several days in jail high and blissfully unaware of how dire her situation was. From there she details her incarceration experience. Viewers of Orange is the New Black (Piper Kiernen provides a cover blurb and Blakinger mentions her book a couple of times in the memoir) will have some idea of what it might be like behind bars, but Blakinger's detailed perspective is well worth exploring. Although there is prisoner-on-prisoner cruelty and violence, and arbitrary punishment for minor infractions, she also talks about how dehumanizing the experience can be, because the people responsible for guarding them generally don't treat their charges like human beings, rather as so much cattle to be herded from one place to another. When one guard is kind to her, listening to her like he would a "normal" person, she arranges a jailhouse marriage after he is no longer guarding her.

She describes prison as mostly being about waiting—hours of sitting on a bunk or in an empty cell, "just waiting for time to pass." She addresses the failure of the system to do what it is meant to do. "Locking hundreds of traumatized and damaged women together and threatening them constantly with additional punishments is not rehabilitation...it is not public safety."

When she was released on parole, she was interviewed about her experiences and given the opportunity to freelance for the Ithaca Times, but since she was "on paper," she could be sent back to prison at any time for a speeding ticket or being out past curfew or getting caught straying into another county on an errand. "Parole isn't really designed for you to succeed," she writes, and "almost a third of people released from prison end up right back there within a year."

She ended up at the Houston Chronicle, where she started writing about criminal justice, including coverage of death row inmates at Huntsville State Prison. She wielded Freedom of Information Act requests like a machete and soon became a thorn in the side of prison officials across the state and beyond. Her in-depth investigations into prisoner issues occasionally led to policy changes and reforms. In one memorable case, she was able to convince prison officials to supply convicts with much-needed dentures. After she disclosed a quota system at an institution, hundreds of disciplinary cases were tossed out. Her advocacy and reputation grew to the point where she started receiving calls, letters and smuggled-out videos from inmates, advising her of problems and thanking her for being their voice. She moved to her current position at the Marshall Project, continuing her focus on prisons and jails.

The memoir alternates between her incarceration and her post-prison experience, which isn't typical, and Blakinger fully acknowledges that her privilege as a white woman from an affluent and well-educated family afforded her possibilities that aren't generally available to ex-cons. Even getting readmitted to Cornell was not something that would have been possible for many Black and brown ex-felons.

She has made the most of her second chance, though, championing prisoners' rights and exposing systemic issues in the prisons and jails. Through this book, she lives up to the promise she made to herself shortly after getting out of prison: "I would not hide from my past, I would be relentlessly honest and open about it."