A Lorton Prison Project

About the Book

This story captures the insight of a bright, intuitively smart young man who grew up in the low-income housing projects of Southeast Washington, DC, our nation’s capital city. His name was Jimmy Black Blango, better known as JB. He lived in the Barry Farms Housing projects at the height of a glorified drug market, in the midst of a culture of the celebrated thug life, gang violence, and mob-style crime. Aside from all that, it was a known fact that gangbangers pledged allegiance to serving time in jail. Even JB got caught up in a clean sweep operation on the streets of Washington, DC, and was sent down to Lorton to serve his time. From there, his status on the streets of Washington, DC, was upgraded to include street credits (i.e., the status of lieutenant) for serving a stench at what was once called the most notorious prison on the east coast, the Lorton Correctional Complex. Now that the prison was mandated by federal law to shut down, the criminal element on the outside decided to bring their drug enterprise on the inside. This was an effort to establish networks that reached beyond the district and extended to all points targeted south. Yet due to the pending closure of the Lorton Complex and the greed among thieves, backstabbing gangbangers, cold-blooded killers, malicious cutthroat staffers, and others caused the whole scam to blow up. At the end of the day, a nefarious culmination of unsavory conduct caused many elements of the Lorton Complex to suffer its unfortunate demise.

About the Author

I have been blessed to work over twenty-seven years in the prison system for both the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and the state of North Carolina Department of Corrections . My career began in 1986 upon completion of my college studies in Chapel Hill. I am a product of the North Carolina public school system. I graduated from Kinston High School in 1981. And then I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice and Psychology. I also completed some graduate studies at Central Michigan University in 2009. I have worked in the capacity of career counselor, camp counselor, case manager, correctional officer, and correctional treatment specialist throughout the course of my career. In hindsight, it has become my own opinion that these roles could best be served with one’s ability to execute a hefty dose of humility, master versatility, and foster stern discipline. I have experienced multiple levels of management protocols, yet the waters are no less murky at the top. Our criminal justice system is sorely broken and has been out of control for many, many years. Lastly, as President Barack Hussein Obama, one of the greatest men of our time, succinctly states, “change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”