My name is Jerrell Brooks #1120649. I am a 35-year-old Black man who has been illegally incarcerated since the tender age of 17 for a crime I did not commit. I have been convicted of two counts of 1st degree murder and sentenced to die in a level five maximum security prison here in Missouri, home of one of the deadliest gangs in American history: the Ku Klux Klan. 

Since I have been in prison, I’ve found myself and my purpose. During the 19 years I have been here, I have demonstrated a commitment to rehabilitation…I have literally completed every program the Missouri Department of Corrections has to offer…I’ve also made a transition from an active gang member to becoming a God-fearing man.

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My story is a typical one: A poor young Black child growing up in a poor-urban community in America while suffering from some form of abuse (mentally or physically, if not both). I had one big question in my heart, “God, why me?” I never knew my biological father because, he too, has spent his entire life in a Missouri State Prison. I was raised by a single parent, my beautiful mother. I only saw or had a father figure for 3/5 of my entire life, let alone in my household. The majority of those times my stepfather was either struggling with substance abuse or he was abusive towards my mother and myself…I am another statistic to the white man’s mass incarceration plot dating back to the year of…forever????

I am from a state home to the most prisons in America, even with states like Texas and California whose populations double if not 3 or 4 times more than ours. If this injustice system in the state of Missouri isn’t about the dollar, then how does this happen to a small state like Missouri? People, you would think that with over 20 something correctional facilities here in Missouri that there should or would be more rehabilitation, but it is the total opposite. How do you expect a person that enters the prison system as a teenager at 17 and is released when he is 35-40 years old, to live a productive life when he was given no productive tools of educating himself or even given productive job training skills to prepare to enter back into society?

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In the U.S. criminal justice system, there is a saying, “once a criminal, always a criminal.” I personally beg to differ. A criminal is again, a mind state. A mind state that can be reformed by the simplest thing as being loved by someone or even a visit by someone you love. It’s the lack of attention! We also know that every part of the criminal justice system falls most heavily on the poor and people of color, including the fact that slavery is mandated by the 13th amendment of the U.S. constitution as LEGAL SLAVERY!