“People are going to see about what happens when there’s a lack of opportunity in the community,” Freeway Ricky Ross observes about Ice-T’s new reality series, Life After Prison. “Cause people are going to eat. If they’re hungry, they’re going to find a way to eat.”
Incarcerated for years, far removed from society, the road ahead for ex-convicts in a world that stamps them as inferior will soon be documented on television.
Life After Prison, a new reality series executive produced by Ice-T and produced by John Boy Watts, a former inmate and conman, aims to shed light on the prison cycle, and break patterns of detainment by creating a house where felons can get back on their feet.
Set in Los Angeles, the show will put a handful of former prisoners into a house together Real World-style, where they will rebuild their lives with the help of mentors like Watts and Ross, and a live-in therapist from Beverly Hills.
“Right now, America needs somebody with substance,” Ross, one of the biggest drug traffickers in U.S. history, tells theGrio. “For them to see somebody that has been through as many things as I’ve been through, that’s willing to share my learning with others so that they can benefit, I think that’s amazing. That’s what this country needs as a whole.”
A chance for the disenfranchised
Ross spent 13 years behind bars for masterminding a large-scale narcotics trade that had him earning $3 million dollars a day at one point in time.
Along with Watts, who served 9 years in prison for defrauding the U.S. Medicare program, the two intend to prove that what society deems rotten can actually blossom with good care.
Both have become mentors and public speakers after completing their time, and have their hand in several creative projects.
“Showing a different light, showing that we can bring a bunch of people together that people turn their back on to give them a second or third chance, I think it will get them to believe in themselves again,” says Watts. “We believe that there’s always a way if you make a way. If you get up every day and make that difference for yourself.”
Adds Ross, while time has passed, circumstances have not necessarily improved.
Intense economic gaps contribute to an extended mobility deficit for those with a prison stamp on their slate.
“When I started selling drugs, the economy was really similar to this right here,” he explains. “There’s no jobs, people didn’t know what they were going to do. Right now, unemployment is skyrocketing and I’m out here on the streets so I know what the community is going through. Our community is hurting.”
Checking the felony box
Unlike many reality shows, Life After Prison focuses on the have-nots of society.
Though it’s still in development, the cast of characters is made up of real people who have committed tragic crimes, and don’t have the luxury to philander their lives for attention.
They have no money or steady job to help push them along, no bank account or assets.
Furthermore, they have a record attached to their resume and parole officer checking their every move.
“To this day, I look at it like I should be in prison for the rest of my life or I should be resting in peace,” Alfredo Barrios, a member of the cast, tells theGrio.
Barrios, 39, served 15 years in prison for a rap sheet that includes homicide, home invasion robbery, and five counts of attempted murder.
He narrowly evaded the death penalty, and used the second chance at life to reform his ways.
Less than a year out of prison, he now works as a steam cleaner and started his own business using hip-hop study and merchandising to educate youth.
“Before I was released from prison, I used to see many people come in and out, the same individuals,” Barrios recalls. “They would make excuses, saying ‘There’s no jobs, nobody would hire me.’ So I want to give guys who are coming out a reason to say there is something out there after prison. There is a way to make it.”
Admittedly, the justice system proved a buffer to Barrios’ criminal tendencies, and offered a similar shield for fellow castmate Jayreisha Rasberry.
Rasberry, 26, went to prison for six years on an armed robbery conviction.
A year following her release, she says the most difficult aspect of being a felon is the box she has to check on paperwork.
“I’m a number,” she remarks to theGrio. “I’m not even who I am. I’m X24399 and that number will forever stick with me. It’s real traumatizing and people don’t understand that…We’re not animals.”
Rage against the ‘machine’
Behind bars, Rasberry says she gained a level of patience that’s helped her to adjust to real world situations.
“I’ve dealt with people who I would not normally have dealt with,” she says. “There was just a certain tolerance I had that I wouldn’t have put up with on the street. Inside, I’ve learned to pick and choose my battles, I’ve learned to have a little more respect with authority figures.”
Prison reform activists often criticize the justice system for perpetuating a cycle where those doomed to captivity seamlessly meet their fate.
Laws target minorities and the weakest members of society, and the prison system puts them under lock, demands free labor, allows them to self-destruct, and releases them into a place where they return to ill-fated measures.
Attempting to break the chain, Ross and Watts want to help their fallen comrades open a window of light.
“We’re trying to fight against this machine that’s turning on people of color,” says Ross, blaming specifically the music industry for promoting a false sense of hope and demand for instant gratification.
“You can’t let your environment dictate who you are, and what you believe and where you’re going in life,” he continues. “You’ve got to be the one to control that and sometimes you might have to be an auto-mechanic, you might have to wash cars, you might have to cut lawns. People right now, they’re just not into that. They’re into the microwave: give me my money right now.”
For Troy Peltv, a member of the L.A. Crips gang who spent over 20 years in prison for drug conspiracy, the system nearly took his life.
Now 45 years old, Peltv describes prison as a place where evil harvests its fruit. He calls it a holding cell not meant to reform people, but test their stamina.
“While I was in there I utilized my time, I made the best of it,” he remarks. “It would have destroyed me. I would have failed once I hit the streets. I would have been right back, I would have been a product of the system again.”
Before he turned to education, Peltv participated in “numerous riots,” moving back and forth from state to federal prison. He spent time in the Supermax and Security Housing Unit (SHU), an environment where living conditions have been said to violate constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
“I kept moving around because of gangbanging,” he recalls. “In the federal prison, you’ll be killed faster because you’re dealing with guys from different states. The Crips and Bloods, they’re in every state now…You’re dealing with every gang member that’s from a ghetto in every state.”
Seeking a new way of reformation
A microcosm for degenerative society, prison may have left each of these ex-convicts with a scar, but not a malignant stain.
On Life After Prison, they will deal with their wounds; assert new ground; and work through what mental and social issues have developed over time.
Watts recruited a self-described “blond, Beverly Hills psychologist,” who will be staying with the group.
Out of place, maybe, Watts believes she could be the trick to holistically tackling issues at hand.
“Whatever she can bring to the table to raise spirits, I think it could be good,” he points out. “Whether they accept her, we’ll have to see how it plays out because she don’t come from where we came from.”
With the backing of Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Watts has devised a program similar to a halfway house that he believes will not only be valuable to those who go through it first hand, but to the American public interested in understanding the justice system. He currently is working with Ice-T to negotiate with networks and bring the show to air.
Following the success of programs like Oz and Orange is the New Black, along with MSNBC’s reality series Lockup, Watts senses a desire from people to watch the entire process of law and order.
And it will be honest.
“People may volley, people may end up back in prison,” he says, acknowledging that two of the characters he filmed in the teaser are already back behind bars. “Of course, there’s going to be fights and attitudes. You’ve got somebody fresh out of jail doing 20 years, he got a chip on his shoulder.”
Rasberry adds, “I meet a lot of people who find out how long I’ve been down and they want to know [about it]. They’re so interested in prison life and this is a real inside look…That place is crazy, I’m happy to be out of it.”