Six years ago, RadioIQ shared the story of Rojai Fentress – a man who, at 15, was pulled out of school, handcuffed and accused of a murder he did not commit. He had no criminal record and refused a plea bargain that would have kept him behind bars for five years, insisting he was not guilty. The judge gave him 53 years, but after 24 years UVA’s Innocence Project won him a conditional pardon. Fentress learned about the decision when a guard told him to pack up.
“I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ and he said, ‘You’re going home.’ I said, ‘What?’ (laughs) ‘Beg your pardon.’”
"You’re going home! They want you to leave right now – immediately. You’re leaving today," said the guard.
(cheering) Supporters rushed to the Augusta Correctional Center to meet Fentress in the parking lot. Five-foot ten, 240 pounds, wearing khaki prison garb, white sneakers and thick brown glasses, he walked into the sunlight and embraced his lawyers. One had come with a black Labrador retriever. Fentress knelt down to pat the dog which, in turn, began licking his face.
“Oh no!” cried Fentress. “My first kiss!”
Over the next few weeks he would spend time with family in Richmond and rejoice in the simple pleasures he had missed in prison.
“I want to take a bath. I want to loofah. I want to sit in bath salts. I want to fizzle.”
But as time passed, Fentress struggled to keep a job and was perhaps tormented by the abuse he suffered as a young man incarcerated with violent criminals. In April, he took his own life.
That does not surprise Trevor Griffiths, a psychotherapist who – himself -- spent 23 years in state prisons.
“If a person who’s been in a cell for 20 years find themselves walking around the streets of Richmond, Virginia with no clear path as to what do I do next? + They’ve lived in cages. They’re told when to eat, when to bathe. When to go outside. When they can’t. We really expect these people to just come home and just reintegrate into society with no issues -- seamlessly?
Too often, he says, people released from prison can’t afford mental health services or feel therapy is not for them.
“For people of color who have been taught for decades that therapy is for the crazy folks – therapy is not for me, but then when you come home from the penitentiary – hey man, I can’t find a job. I can’t get in housing. I have to sleep on the train. I have to sleep outside. I have to sleep in the shelter where it’s 50-60 people to a room. I’m back in the prison system.”
And after years of watching their backs, witnessing violent behavior by other prisoners or by guards, he argues inmates suffer something akin to post traumatic stress disorder.
Soldiers coming home from war get help from the veterans' administration, but there’s nothing like that for x-cons.
“You have to hire people who are trained in this discipline to do the work, and no one wants to fund that," Griffiths explains. "The politicians don’t want to be seen as soft on crime.”
And the Department of Corrections does not offer individual counseling to the majority of prisoners before they’re freed. That’s why inmate Askari Lumumba launched a seven-part program for fellow prisoners called Inside Justice. It explores the ways that prisoners themselves have been victims.
“Hurt people hurt people. Most of the guys who commit these crimes, who are acting in the way they’re acting, who have this I don’t give a f___ mentality, that’s a trauma response. A lot of that is because they’ve endured so much over their life, but nobody has acknowledged their victimization.”
His wife, Nicole, was murdered while he was locked up, but the state’s victim assistance program turned him away.
“I sent my in-laws $8,000 to help with funeral costs. I never knew that the crime victim fund helps compensate for that,” Lumumba recalls.
And, he says, the prison offered no emotional support.
“Like no grief counseling. Nothing! You know what I’m saying?”
Lumumba began working with a dozen men at Dillwyn, then assessed how their feelings had changed. His friend Marva Austin helped to assemble his findings.
“The program really helped these guys to let their guard down and release some pain that they were going through.”
Word spread at the prison, and she says more inmates would like to take part.
“After the first session, Askari had double the amount of guys come to him and say, ‘I heard about the program. I want to be a part of it.’”
Lumumba hopes to win parole this year and to offer help to others leaving prison once he’s freed. Dr. Griffiths is also working on a program to help prisoners with what he calls Post Incarceration Syndrome.
