A Jailhouse Education That Changed My Life

And some big news to share with you

From the Lockerbox

Early in my four years at the parish jail, an old-timer named Slim Jenkins landed on my tier. He had come back from Angola Prison on a court order, and I noticed right away that the guys who had done time at the state penitentiary treated him with respect. Slim was an educator at Angola. He taught GED and self-help classes, including Transactional Analysis—a class many of us would later come to value deeply.

One day, Slim saw me in the day room, trying to learn about the legal system by reading newspapers. He walked over with an old civics textbook he had brought with him and offered to tutor me.

As a rule, I didn’t accept help from anyone in jail. My guiding principle was simple: Don’t ever give anyone a reason to think you owe them something.

But Slim was different. I could tell right away he wasn’t offering to help so he could demand something in return. He saw a young kid in a desperate situation, and he wanted to help.

So I took him up on it. Every day, we sat at a desk in the day room, working through that civics textbook. He taught me how the U.S. government was supposed to function: the balance of power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. And with his help, I gained a sense of how laws were made and implemented—laws that were having a huge and immediate impact on my life.

At the time, I was staring down a death penalty trial and trying to figure out how to fight for my survival. Learning about the government gave me a way to educate myself about the legal system. It was an early step on my journey to grasp the full weight of what I was up against so I could learn how to fight back.

Slim Jenkins is gone now, but he helped so many people like me while he was in prison. The time he spent investing in young people like me didn’t go to waste. We paid his lessons forward, helping others the way he once helped us.

If this post brings to mind someone who helped lay a foundation for you, I’d love to hear about it. Your stories keep me encouraged!

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Announcing The Jailhouse Lawyer

Thinking back to where my journey began in the parish jail, it means a lot to share this news with you: I’m publishing a book.

The Jailhouse Lawyer is the story of how I went from those early days learning about the legal system with Slim Jenkins in Orleans Parish Prison to becoming the head of Angola’s inmate counsel program. It’s about the cases I worked on, the people I met, and the fight for justice inside a system designed to keep poor people out of the courts.

I wrote it with my friend, Sophie, who has been a longtime collaborator of mine in the fight for criminal justice reform.

The book, which is being published by Penguin Press, will be released on July 8, but you can preorder it now.

I was honored and so happy when John Grisham said he’d read an early version of my story. He shared some very kind words:

“If I created a fictional character like Calvin Duncan, no one would believe him and the story wouldn’t work. Fiction can be many things, but it has to be believable. Duncan’s story is so incredible it strains belief. It is so heartwarming and hopeful that it will stay with you for a long time.”

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In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing updates here and on my website about some awesome initiatives we have planned around the book’s release. Thanks for being part of this journey with me.

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Finally, I want to share a powerful article by my friend, James Forman, Jr., in The New York Times Magazine about the historic drop in youth incarceration rates. I hope to write more about it in my next post. We all need a good news story right now—don’t miss this one!

Take care,

Calvin