Introduction

There are stories that demand to be told—stories that, when heard, leave an undeniable mark on the heart and mind. Imprisoned at 13 is one of those stories. Robert Clark’s memoir isn’t just an account of one man’s experience within the prison system; it’s a testament to a flawed, failing system—one that warehouses individuals rather than rehabilitates them, one that perpetuates cycles of suffering rather than offering a way forward.

Bob was just a kid—thirteen years old when he was sentenced to what was supposed to be four months in a State Training School for troubled youth. Instead, he found himself locked inside the walls of a maximum-security prison, forgotten by the system that put him there. No guidance, no escape, no rehabilitation—just another nameless case, just another number in a system that didn’t care if he ever got out. His four-month sentence turned into a lifetime behind walls, separating him from a society he would never truly know or experience.

Bob was not a bad kid. He was a kid thrown into a world he didn’t understand, put into a situation he had no power to control, and led to believe there was no other way. He never got the chance to be a teenager, never got the chance to grow up in the world outside those walls. His story is not a plea for sympathy—it is an undeniable truth about what happens when justice fails and when rehabilitation is replaced by systemic neglect.

—From the Foreword to the Second Printing of Imprisoned at 13