Wednesday, July 21, 2010:
One of my co-workers, “Nittie,” made parole yesterday. He’s from Washington D.C. and was sentenced to twenty-three years to life in 1990 for weapons and drug distribution charges.
D.C doesn’t have a prison system, so their inmates do time in federal prisons. But D.C. inmates do have parole, which federal inmates do not have unless they were sentenced before 1987 when the federal parole system was abolished.
So Nittie’s been locked up for the last twenty years. He was thirty when he fell and now he’s fifty. That’s a long time and a lot has changed. But I’ve met no other person in the last ten years who is more deserving of this …I would call it a gift. Freedom is definitely a sweet gift.
It was his first time up for parole and he was lucky because the majority of D.C inmates up for parole the first time do not make it. It made me feel good to see something go right for someone in here, because I’m so used to seeing things go so wrong — lives derailed, and horrible choices that result in even worse consequences.
I almost felt as if I had made parole myself when he gave me the thumbs up sign after the hearing and I imagined him walking through those prison gates for the first time in twenty years.
Nittie’s one of the few I’ve met who has developed the attitude that his time was given to him instead of taken away. He used his time to achieve things he would not have achieved otherwise and I’m glad to see the same attitude and outlook we both share pay off.
