William Blake: I Will Choose Death Over Life Behind Bars Unless New York Changes Its Parole Laws

In 2013, when I had been locked up in solitary confinement for 25 years, I wrote an essay entitled “A Sentence Worse Than Death,” which I’m told has been read by upwards of a million people to date. It describes what life was like in “the box” (the special housing unit, or SHU for short) in New York’s state prisons, and posited that if given the choice, I would have opted for a sentence of death over more than two decades of incarceration in abject isolation.

At the time, I didn’t have that choice. Now, it appears, I do.

I am a 62-year-old man and have recently developed health issues that have led me to start thinking quite a bit about death and dying. When the problems you’re confronted with can kill you, it’s only natural to do this. Sooner or later, we will all have to face the fact of our mortality.

Not everyone, though, is locked up and serving a prison sentence longer than they will live to finish.

I am a prisoner who is serving such a sentence. Currently, I have been locked up for 39 years. I am not eligible for parole until August 2060, when I would be two months shy of my 97th birthday. Unless the law changes, in all likelihood I will be in prison for the rest of my life. Mine could be a sentence of death by incarceration.

I started my death thoughts at the obvious place: I thought about the life I would likely be living if I fought hard to beat the lung disease I have that could kill me, and managed to conquer it. [MORE]