CONVICTION

About the Book

CONVICTION focuses on the turmoil experienced by accused and convicted persons. Writing of the horrendous ordeal the author underwent following a 2016 criminal trial – a trial that he lost – this prison memoir explores the author’s emotions and experiences during a five-month stay at an upstate New York county jail. It is a work supplemented by the insights of philosophers and historical figures whose books the author read from his jail cell while awaiting sentence. Analyzing the concepts of anguish, shame, redemption, happiness, dependency, love, and faith, CONVICTION is work of philosophy permeated from the prisoner perspective. The work will appeal to academics of every stripe, as well everyday men and women particularly inmates and their families searching for meaning into their suffering.

About the Author

Tapping into his education in law, liberal arts, government, and against the backdrop of a turbulent childhood, Michael Kelsey writes interconnecting essays in a prison memoir that strives to make meaning out of the incarceration and social leveling that follows from a criminal conviction. An attorney, three-term county lawmaker, college philosophy adjunct professor, and candidate for State office when allegations against him arose, Kelsey stood trial and lost amid questionable circumstances. His time in jail was thereafter spent writing of the legal processes that he underwent, and their toil upon the human psyche. He writes with an insider perspective alongside an empathy that only an inmate can muster.