Five…four…three…two…one… Happy New Year! Balls drop. Confetti flitters. Fireworks burst. We dance, drunk-sing our favorite songs, and kiss our favorite lover. The year has begun — unless you’re in prison.
On the outside, my New Year’s Eves were typical: My friends and I did the countdown. We threw confetti and watched the fireworks. We danced and kissed at midnight.
In prison, these rituals don’t exist. And 20 years in, New Year’s has simply become another way for me to mark time. Unlike some other men inside, for me there is no dancing or shaking the bars to my cell. I don’t scream “Happyyyy new yearrrrr!” And I certainly don’t mimic free-world celebrations long gone. I simply change my calendar and listen to music while I lie in bed.
New Year’s Day is observed very differently by men with long-term prison sentences. Each of us is doing time. I decided to ask some of my peers, others who have been incarcerated for a decade or two, about their evolution, what New Year’s Day means to them now.
I started with a group of fellow students at the Hudson Link office in Green Haven Correctional Facility in calm Stormville, New York. Hudson Link is a nonprofit organization, founded and run by formerly incarcerated people. It bridges the gap between higher learning and punitive institutions. It currently collaborates with five colleges, offering incarcerated men and women in New York State the opportunity to earn up to a bachelor’s degree.
David Prince, a Jamaican man 16 calendars into a 46-years-to-life sentence, was positioned behind a desk typing diligently on a computer. “I am Rasta, so my new year began on Sept. 11,” he told me.
Sitting across from him was Anthony Ross, a Jamaican man 33 calendars into a 44-years-to-life sentence. He pointed out that neither he nor David subscribed to the Gregorian calendar that Americans typically use. A chubby baby in a sash wasn’t their symbol of New Year’s Day. Their minds were on their ancestors. “One day, me want outside in Africa,” Anthony added in a heavily accented Jamaican patois, with an image of the motherland in his mind.
Next, I entered the law library, just across the hall from the Hudson Link office. I walked by several men who were making copies of their latest legal motions and having their documents notarized.
Anthony Arriaga, an administrative clerk and paralegal who other men in Green Haven often turn to for help with their cases, is 23 calendars into a 25-years-to-life sentence. He sat in a corner, generating call-outs for appointments within the prison, on a computer with a house fan blowing into the CPU to keep it cool.
“I hate New Year’s in prison,” Arriaga said, pushing his Ray Ban-esque glasses into his face. Although he is an accomplished paralegal and an undergraduate student at Hudson LInk, New Year’s Day reminds him of what he has not attained, of wasted time. “I wouldn’t be doing this,” Arriaga said, “I would be driving trucks or computer programming — what I was going to school for,” he said, referring to his path before prison.
A few days later, I was working on my final paper for an abnormal psychology course in the facility’s computer lab where college students are given limited access to computers to create Word or LibreOffice documents for our classes. Paul Thompson, a Hudson Link student 23 calendars into a 25-year-to-life sentence, told me that earlier in his sentence he too had shaken his cell bars and yelled out, “Happy New Year!” at midnight. But he was just going through the motions: “I was screaming without any real emotional connection,” he said. “They were not screams of joy; [they were] really screams of pain.”
Paul reflected on the prospect of reuniting with his family, and meeting the younger relatives he speaks to over the phone. “They don’t know me,” he said leaning forward in his seat, a palm spread over his chest. “They know of me.”
Chauncey Dillon, a student about 28 calendars into a 30-years-to-life sentence, took a break from writing his term papers to talk with me. He felt stifled by prison in spite of his progress over the years. Chauncey said, “I’m full of potential. I [just] can’t pop the clutch to get the next gear.”
On Sunday, in church, I encountered Ralph Strong, a dapper man with an easy smile despite being 13 calendars into a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. In spite of his sentence, Ralph is an undergraduate student and a member of Andre Norman’s Second Chance University. Ralph is making changes within himself and advocating for reduced violence in the prison. “I’m not counting down calendar days,” he said. “Time’s not important to me anymore. If I’ve got a calendar up, it’s because I like the pictures on it.”
Ian Fields, a tall man wearing Versace glasses, 16 calendars into a 40-year-sentence, asked me to picture a scene as we walked toward the facility’s school area where CNN would film us in the law library that day for a story about the Justice Defenders organization, a non-profit that provides legal education and access to legal services in prisons around the world.
Ian described an atypical New Year in 2016, at Auburn Correctional Facility in a family reunion unit. He and his wife lay in bed watching a New Year’s Eve celebration on television. Ian tried and failed to awaken his wife in time for a midnight kiss. Although he missed that opportunity, he still had the chance to create a memory with someone he loves. It is a salient memory, a crutch that has supported him through the new years that have followed.
The memory that Ian had shared was still on my mind when we entered the law library. Bruce Bryan’s glowing skin, from bald head to goatee, brought me back to reality. He stood in front of a CNN camera with Alexander McClean, the founder of Justice Defenders, and two formerly incarcerated Kenyan men who had completed the program. Bruce was impacted by their story, which 60 Minutes covered in 2022.
I was very surprised to see Bruce, and we embraced. It felt like we were back in Sing Sing, where we had lived on the same tier, before we were separated when I was transferred to another facility. Bruce was released soon thereafter, and granted clemency.
Before we parted ways in 2023, Bruce gave me the address to write for my own Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar, which marks “dates from (political, social, and prison justice) movement history.” He kept a vision board next to his calendar back when we were both in Sing Sing, as I do today. On that board, he envisioned a flight to Africa to meet Alexander McClean and the Kenyan gentlemen in the room. Now, here they were in the U.S., together.
We had a roundtable discussion with other Hudson Link students, Justice Defenders members and Daniel F. Martuscello III, New York’s Corrections Commissioner, about extending higher education to the prison population and correctional staff alike, and how that would improve the lives of everyone involved.
I returned to the housing unit in the afternoon. Two Freedom for Political Prisoners calendars, amongst other mail, were flung across my pancaked cot. That evening, I returned to the school area. After Ian, David and I taught a precollege writing class for Hudson Link, I gave Ian the extra calendar. The other I will fasten to the perforated air vent in the rear of the cell with a paperclip on Jan. 1. My story-vision board is on the left. My head will lie on a pillow, just below it.
On New Year’s Day, after you have kissed a lover and popped champagne, I will ruminate. I will think on time wasted, time used wisely, time with family, and time without family. I will analyze ways to optimize the time I must do, as to not let “the time do me.” I will imagine possibilities as Bruce had. Most of all, in contrition, I will ponder the thinking and actions that cost me all this time.
Joseph Wilson is a father, self-taught composer, librettist, singer, songwriter, pianist, art curator, co-founder of the Sing Sing Family Collective and contributing writer for The Marshall Project. He is currently incarcerated at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York.
