Growing life after a life’s sentence.
By: Stef Scari
Tags: Prison Reform, Juvenile Justice, Education

In my senior year at the University of Michigan I took an English class focused on connecting prisoners to the arts. Though not a practiced actor (and only a quarter of an inch shy of 5’1) I led a weekly three-hour improv workshop to eight men; their crimes spanned armed robbery to murder.

Despite receiving a life sentence at the age of sixteen, one man’s potential shined and carried through to his untapped intellect, optimism, and heart. We’ve been in touch for the last seven years; he has become a confidant and friend. This story is his journey in his own words.

Please note: when I met Giovanni in 2012 he could hardly read or write. This man’s voice and story deserve to be heard. Thank you for helping me share it.

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Growing life after a life sentence.

By Giovanni Casper

Upon entering prison, at the age of seventeen, I was frightened by the stereotypical assumptions associated with incarceration; however, it was not long before I adapted to my new surroundings. Prison, as horrible as it is, was actually only a reflection of my neighborhood and household: drugs, gangs, violence, and oppression were everywhere. For years, I did not repel the prison ethos because it was just too powerful, plus I had no reason to alter myself, but one day it all changed.

I remember being introduced to the game Scrabble by a friend of mine named Dirty. I was twenty-one years old. He explained the game and I thought it would be fairly easy to win, after all I could spell and read small words.

We played a few games and he won them all, but during our last game I deciphered a seven letter word. If the word was spelled correctly I would get fifty points for using all of my tiles, plus the points on the board. I was so excited that I began boasting about how much smarter I was than him. This enraged him so he bet me if I spelled the word incorrectly I had to jog ten laps (five miles). Five miles, when I weighed two-hundred and twenty pounds would have killed me (I am only 5' 8' with my shoes on), but I agreed because I was certain I spelled it correctly. I had spelled this word hundreds of times in my life so I was ready!

Before I uncovered my letters, I started laughing because it was going to be super funny watching him run all of those laps. I placed my tiles down on the board one by one until my seven letter word was revealed: ‘COMEING’.

When Dirty saw it he told me I had to run the laps, but I did not understand. I was right! I argued with him for a while until he grabbed the dictionary and showed me it was not a word.

Later on that night, the gears in my brain started spinning. I kept wondering why my friends and family had never corrected me. These were the people I admired and emulated. What if they did not know how to spell the word either, and if this was true… what else didn’t they know. I needed to learn to lead myself. I could no longer rely on others to guide me…

I continued to play Scrabble everyday that summer, sometimes twenty games a day. I lost ninety percent of the games, but I secretly learned how to spell countless basic words, plus I learned about prefixes, affixes and suffixes. I was embarrassed about my lack of academic rudiments so I hid it behind a feigned enthusiasm for Scrabble.

When summer was over and I could no longer play Scrabble outside, I began to study the dictionary in my cell for hours a day. To my surprise, I realized I had a superb memory. The words became my life - memorizing them, finding synonyms and learning to put them into sentences.

My behavior was abnormal for this environment so the other juvenile prisoners began to call me a word that had evaded me my entire life: smart. This was eye opening and once they perceived me as intelligent I began to believe I was intelligent too. There was only one way to know for certain though; sign up to take the GED.

Obtaining a GED while incarcerated is not easy, especially if an inmate has an extensive prison sentence. The prison allows inmates to participate in rehabilitative programs only as they inch closer to their release date. This created a huge problem for me because I was punished with a death sentence, which essentially meant I would die in confinement.

However I was still eager to know if I was growing mentally, or if I would be labelled as dumb forever. I got lucky because the prison decided to check all of the juvenile prisoners’ education levels. I took a few tests that showed I had a third grade reading comprehension level, and a fourth grade math computation level. This was disappointing, but not a surprise. I had not been in school since I was seventeen years old, and I spent the majority of those days watching television, exercising and playing games. At the age of twenty-one, the only book with more than ten pages I had perused was the Scrabble dictionary.

After failing those tests, I was given ninety days to study for the GED. I was placed in a classroom with one teacher and a tutor, who was an older inmate. I had never been a good student and had been expelled from school four times, twice in elementary school and twice in high school.

I got flashbacks to my old ways of coping with academic stress. In the tenth grade I started at a new school and was called on to read. I refused because 1) I felt overwhelmed and 2) I knew I couldn’t read aloud. The teacher kept insisting, so I started disrespecting him so I would get kicked out of class and not have to read.

This time, school was a little different. For the first time in my life I could focus on actual learning while I was in school. The prison removed most of the things that distracted me from education in the past. I had access to food, shelter, clothing, hot water, and electricity. I decided to try.

I caught on quickly to math, but was told the teacher and tutor couldn’t help me with reading because ‘the only way to become a better reader is to read”. I asked for a book and was given Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. I dedicated myself to reading. I stopped watching television and playing games until I passed the GED. I read the book for almost eleven hours a day, writing down every word I was not familiar with and I could not pronounce. I did this repeatedly with many other books over the three month span.

The time to take the GED came too quickly. I did not feel like I was ready, and I was afraid to fail. I took the tests with thirty other juvenile prisoners. While I was taking it I realized it was too hard, but I finished it anyway. It took a few weeks before we got our scores back. When they arrived, my friend told me that we all failed. I asked all the juvenile prisoners who I thought were smart if they passed the test; they all failed. I went back to my cell devastated.

While sitting in my cell, the counselor called my name over the intercom and unlocked my door. I exited my cell to see what she wanted. She gave me my GED scores. I did not even look at them. The next day, I noticed I was not on the schedule for school, but everyone else was so I asked why. The CO told me I was removed from the schedule because I was too dumb. I had to look at my scores because I was curious to see how badly I did.

I looked over my GED scores and realized I passed! I scored above average in reading and mathematics. I passed and everyone else failed, that’s why I was removed from the school schedule. I showed everyone on the yard my scores. They were all in disbelief. What happened next really shocked me…. a bunch of the young dudes began asking me for help. They saw me as proof that they could pass the test too, but I didn’t feel ready for such a great responsibility.

After I obtained my GED, I was free to do whatever I pleased with my time, so I continued to study. I was obsessed with psychology and sociology because I wanted to understand people and myself. I also began reading self-help books so I could improve on my morality.

The books became my parents, friends, teachers, and role models. I used them to recreate myself: through reading I realized the norms of the hood were not the norms of society. The narrow view I saw the world through was self destructive and unproductive. I could not continue to be governed by hood laws. I was growing into a man and I did not want to be like any of the men I was raised around. I wanted to be better.

When I turned twenty-two years old my life changed again. I was called to the medical center to take a DNA test. I did not have any children I knew of so I thought it was a mistake, but I took the test anyway. I could not imagine becoming a father in prison, and it was hard for me to understand how it was possible.

A few years prior, I met a man in prison whose daughter was trying to figure out who the father of her child was. He lived in Grand Rapids (where I was from) and asked me if I thad sex with his daughter. I didn’t want to feud with him, and lied and said I hadn’t. When he was released I assume he spoke to his daughter and added me to the list of potential candidates.

A few months later, the results arrived and it was confirmed that I was the father of a five year old boy. Being a father put an unknown pressure on my shoulders that I wasn’t sure I could handle. Before I discovered my son, I had accepted my fate, but when he showed up I began worrying about the life he was going to have without me. I did not want my son to suffer through life as I had and I needed to save him.

When I became a father I also took on the role of a leader. I began to see the other juvenile prisoners as my peers instead of the opposition. I signed up to become an academic tutor and I was hired immediately. The job was tough, but it gave me a sense of worth. I felt as if I was giving back to society by sending these young men back into the world with more education.

I once taught a young man to read. It was the most difficult task I have ever accepted. We started with the sounds of each letter in the alphabet then proceeded to sight words ( words that do not sound how they look — are, our, would, he). It was a slow process, but after nine months of hard work the nineteen year old went home with the ability to read most of his text messages. It might not sound like much, but to him it was life changing.

It was life changing for me too and for the three or four years I worked as a tutor I helped over sixty-four juveniles conquer the GED before they were released back into society. However, as I worked I still had a deep yearning for higher education and one day I was presented with the opportunity to obtain an Associates Degree.

The day I saw the poster for enrollment to Jackson College I called my Momma and told her I wanted her to help me pay for college. She said she would not help me because she did not see the point. She also said that nobody in their right mind would pay for me to go to college because I had a life sentence. My mom did not understand the man I was becoming; she only remembered the boy who left. I did not listen to her and I continued searching for sponsors.

I was let down after I contacted every friend and family member I could find, and none were willing to aid me.The first person who was willing to support me was a woman I met in prison, of all people. She and I met in a Theater Workshop put together by The University Of Michigan. I never thought a college educated, middle class, five foot two white woman would understand and believe in me more than my own family, but she did so I was off to college to get a degree.

I was participating in the Theater Class when I met Stef. I loved her energy but I also assumed she and I would never build any type of bond because of cultural differences. To be honest, I had never been friends with anyone who did not look like me. The majority of my encounters with white people had been through the criminal system that railroaded me, the public school system that failed me, and the local police that harassed me because of my gang affiliation. She turned out to be different and she would change my life in ways I could not have foreseen.

Stef single-handedly contributed more to my rehabilitation and growth than any other human on earth. There were times when the chaos of prison life became too much for me and I needed an escape. She gave me her ears and mailed books I could get lost in. When I found myself regressing from frustration, she told me my life had value. When I lacked confidence and was afraid to fail my friend Stef encouraged and supported me. I do not believe I would be the person I am today without her.

In 2015, I was transferred to Cotton Correctional Facility to pursue my degree and immediately realized how dangerous the place was. As I waited to be assigned a cell, the medical staff rushed a screaming man past me after someone had boiled a bowl of sugar and water until it became thick as maple syrup then doused the man with it. I prayed this was not an omen for my future at Cotton Correctional Facility.

From the start, I felt out of place participating in college courses. There was a ton of self created anxiety tormenting me because I was embarking on a journey that none of my siblings, my mother nor my father had dared traverse. Initially my mother was skeptical and unsupportive. She advised, “do not be upset if you fail because college is not easy”.. I pridefully laughed at what she said, but actually I was fearful I could fail and let everyone down, including my friend Stef.

Fortunately, none of my fears ever materialized. I virtually Aced every class I took. I made the Dean’s List twice and I will be graduating in 2020. My fears became the fuel I needed to succeed, and I was looking forward to showing my family the power of education. I wanted to teach them how to liberate themselves from the manacles of poverty and ignorance, but first I had to find a way to show them from outside of bars.

My chance at freedom came to me in 2016. I had been incarcerated for a decade when the United States Supreme Court ruled that juveniles could not be given death sentences, except in rare circumstances. The arrival of this good news was bittersweet: I wanted badly to be released so I could start over, but I was simultaneously afflicted by the terrible choices I made that cost a man his life. Before I could process the whole situation, I was rushed into court for resentencing because though my criminal case was violent, it was not labelled as heinous.

For the first time, I accepted responsibility for my actions and showed the courts all I had done to reform my thinking. The judge disregarded all my achievements and re-sentenced me to forty-two years. If I am imprisoned for the entirety of my sentence I will be fifty-nine years old when I am freed. This is still a death sentence; the life expectancy of teenager raised in prison is much lower than someone living in the free world.

Honestly, I am not sure what to think about my new prison sentence: there is still a part of me that wants to make my victim’s mother happy by dying in here, but there is also a bigger part of me that needs to properly raise my son. I do not understand the angry misguided teenager I was, I only know the man I am today. I want to show the world that person.