How I Beat the Odds of Never Going Home  

Growing up, I was an odd kid.

I had a Commodore 64 computer on which I tried to make a zombie apocalypses game. I received good grades in school and generally stayed out of trouble.  However, I grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the murder capital of New York City.

Odds were seven out of 10 going to prison, one out of 5 being murdered.

My mother raised me with the belief that education was the way to beat those odds. She said, “Study hard and do everything you can to be one of the three that make it out of here.”

Instead, I took bullying personal, picked up a weapon and embraced the losing odds. By the time I was 17, I had beef with almost every one of the projects that bordered my building, beef in my building, and beef with a major drug organization known for killing two cops and a parole officer.

I had escalated the beefs to the point where I felt there was no way I would live to be 25. Since I was dead anyway, I decided to go out blasting.

At 29 years old, I committed murder and attempted manslaughter, earning a 55 to life sentence in the California prison system. With truth in sentencing, the odds were 100 percent I would spend the rest of my life in prison.

I was tempted to embrace the odds of never going home.

Thoughts like, “No one can do anything to me because I have life,” ran through my mind. I could sell drugs, fight, even kill and the worst that could happen was a trip to the SHU or early parole in a casket.

However, embracing negative odds had dictated my life long enough. Instead of embracing hopelessness, I embraced faith.

Faith is in belief in a sight unseen. In my case, God or Allah.

I decided to pursue a writing career and make something of spending the rest of my life behind bars. That decision kept me out of major trouble and steered me into the direction of education.

I had to learn how to write to be an author, so education offered a way to learn craft, but it also opened my mind to how laws are made, the history of America and how ghettos were formed and why.

Education also led me to become a contributing writer for San Quentin News, and other publications. Additionally, I co-host and co-produce The Ear Hustle Podcast, which was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalists and Dupont Award Winner.

People on the yard call me a “square” because I won’t embrace negative odds anymore.

I’m happy to be seen as square or odd.

This essay was written by Rahsaan “New York” Thomas in collaboration with The Beat Within, a San Francisco-based justice system writing workshop.

Thomas was originally expected to be released in February 2023 but had his sentence commuted by the Governor of California on January 13, 2022.