The Hopes and Fears of All the Years
Back in December 2018, I wrote an intro. My friend, Dina Milito, asked me to write an article for her post. She is part of a place called Minutes Before Six. Here is what I wrote:
My name is Robert Clark. I am currently imprisoned in the state of Kansas. I got locked up when I was thirteen years old.
The year was 1968. I was sentenced to a state training school for boys for vandalism. My sentence was only four months. Little did I know I’d never be free again.
When I arrived at the youth prison, I had some adjustment problems. I ran away several times, which eventually led me to a maximum-security prison in Lincoln, Nebraska, at the age of fourteen.
As a scared youngster, I parlayed that four-month sentence into 222 years for a series of assaults against staff and inmates. When you are that young and in an adult prison, you have to fight for your life and honor.
I’ve been locked up for over fifty years. I am sixty-four years old now (2018). I’ve never had a relationship with a female, never been to a mall, never been fishing, never had a car. I’ve never done anything in society. I hope my story will reach the youth out there who think the petty crimes they are committing in society do not matter. It really does. I was locked up for non-violence, but it ended up costing me my whole life of freedom.
After years of violence and solitary confinement in Nebraska, I was transferred to the state prison in Kansas. I hope no one makes the mistakes I made. Even after all the years of hostility, I am still trying to better myself, working and caring about youth enough to want to reach them with my message.
I got four comments concerning the article. I will share what they said.
CS McClellan Catana said:
This entire nation needs to apologize to people like you, who’ve been dumped out with the trash, as children, and left to rot.
Unknown said:
Your story is quite shocking. You write economically and well. May God bless you with all your aspirations. I hope you will write again.
Unknown said:
Dear Bob, this made me tear up. Our justice system is not working. Especially for juveniles. Juveniles have no idea what the consequences may entail. They cannot wrap their heads around the long-term effects. I’m so sorry our system failed you. Thank you for sharing your story. I know it’s not much, but your story, and you, matter. We can make bad choices and still be good people. Just know someone is thinking of you.
Blue Jeans 2004 said:
What can we say to this? Who on earth devised a system that treats humans worse than any other organism on earth? Their lives are reduced to a body in a cage, existing, being punished and repeatedly punished for being human. God help the people who sign off on these barbaric sentences, and their lack of insight and compassion for people who should have the right to prove they can heal and grow as a person and reenter society much more quickly than these sentences permit. I believe a person issuing a life sentence to a human with no proper justification will rot eternally, and that’s the only compensation for this madness towards my brothers and sisters trapped behind those walls. We will be judged by the way we judge others here. Doesn’t that bother anyone who is for life and death sentences? I guess that’s why they are the opposition. They’re opposed to doing the right thing, and their time will come, hopefully to look at these sentences with more fairness.