The Prison and Jail Innovation Lab (PJIL) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs will be hosting an evening of conversation with author and journalist Keri Blakinger, as she discusses her new acclaimed memoir, Corrections in Ink, with LBJ School Professor Michele Deitch. This moderated discussion will provide a forum for discussing prison conditions, women in custody, and the potential for redemption among justice-impacted people.
Following the event, there will be a book signing.
About Corrections in Ink
Keri Blakinger always lived life at full throttle. Growing up, that meant throwing herself into competitive figure skating with an all-consuming passion that led her to nationals. But when her skating career suddenly fell apart, that meant diving into self-destruction with the intensity she once saved for the ice.
For the next nine years, Keri ricocheted from one dark place to the next: living on the streets, selling drugs and sex, and shooting up between classes all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell. Then, on a cold day during her senior year, the police caught her walking down the street with a Tupperware full of heroin.
Her arrest made the front page of the local news and landed her behind bars for nearly two years. There, in the Twilight Zone of New York’s jails and prisons, Keri grappled with the wreckage of her missteps and mistakes as she sobered up and searched for a better path. Along the way, she met women from all walks of life—who were all struggling through the same upside-down world of corrections. As the days ticked by, Keri came to understand how broken the justice system is and who that brokenness hurts the most.
After she walked out of her cell for the last time, Keri became a reporter dedicated to exposing our flawed prisons as only an insider could. Written with searing intensity, unflinching honesty, and shocks of humor, Corrections in Ink uncovers that dark, brutal system that affects us all. Not just a story about getting out and getting off drugs, this galvanizing memoir is about the power of second chances; about who our society throws away and who we allow to reach for redemption—and how they reach for it.
Speakers
Keri Blakinger
Keri Blakinger is an investigative reporter based in Texas. She covers prisons and jails, criminal justice and injustice for The Marshall Project and writes Inside Out, a regular column published in collaboration with NBC News. She previously covered criminal justice for the Houston Chronicle, and her writing has appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, VICE, the New York Daily News and The New York Times. She is the organization's first formerly incarcerated reporter. Her memoir, Corrections in Ink, published in June 2022.
Michele Deitch
Michele Deitch holds a joint appointment as a distinguished senior lecturer at the LBJ School and the Law School, and she directs LBJ's Prison and Jail Innovation Lab (PJIL), a policy resource center focused on the safe and humane treatment of people in custody. She is an attorney who has worked for over 35 years on criminal justice and juvenile justice policy issues with state and local government officials, corrections administrators, judges and advocates. She specializes in independent oversight of correctional institutions, prison and jail conditions, managing youth in custody, and youth in the adult criminal justice system. Deitch co-chairs the American Bar Association's Subcommittee on Correctional Oversight, and helped draft the ABA's Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners. Her publications include a report on the status of correctional oversight in the United States; a report about COVID deaths in custody in Texas; a report on COVID's effects on women in prisons and jails; and many reports on juvenile justice that have helped change the treatment of youth tried as adults.