John J. Lennon
Prison Journalist
RECENT JOURNALISM BY JOHN J. LENNON
How Do People Released From Prison Find Housing?
Thousands of people released from prison in New York go directly to homeless shelters.
Peddling Darkness
True crime stories, like Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel, make for suspenseful reading. But do they exploit the criminal, and deepen a thirst for punishment?
The Brutal Reality of Life in America’s Most Notorious Jail
I’ve been locked up in maximum-security prisons for two decades. My time on Rikers Island was worse.
Sex, Love & Marriage Behind Bars
In this feature for the Winter 2023 issue of Esquire, John J. Lennon writes about one of the last bastions of prisoner intimacy in America: the conjugal trailers of New York.
A Memoir of Prison Time, Delivered With a Note of Apology
This book review by John J. Lennon of Keri Blakinger’s “Corrections in Ink” appears in New York Magazine/Vulture.
Biden Can Bring Hope To Prisons Like Mine.
In 2017, I was sitting in on a Columbia University course at Sing Sing. I heard that Elias Alcantara, a former White House aide in the Obama administration, was supposed to talk to the class.
Cover photo: Christaan Felber
ABOUT JOHN J. LENNON
John J. Lennon currently serving a 28-years-to-life sentence at Sullivan Correctional Facility for murder, drug sales and gun possession.
He is a contributing editor at Esquire and a contributing writer at the Marshall Project. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, and elsewhere.
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