CORRECTIONS IN INK

An investigative reporter reflects on the time she spent in the prison system for a drug crime.

Growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Blakinger was a good student and promising figure skater who had dreams of competing at the highest level. However, her academics and athleticism concealed darker truths: an eating disorder and suicidal tendencies. When her figure-skating partner abruptly quit their doubles team, her skating career collapsed, plunging her into persistent depression, which she tried to address with drugs, eventually turning to heroin. Her habit continued until her senior year at Cornell, when she was arrested for possessing what was falsely reported as “$150,000 of smack.” Following her arrest, Blakinger spent years in the prison system, where she not only got sober, but also received a firsthand education in the savage inhumanity of the American carceral system. “Behind bars, there are no rules. Sure, there is a rulebook and there are things you cannot do,” she writes. “But when it matters, no one is watching….All the futility, the small cruelties, the refusal to see us as fully human—it was not a flaw in the system. It was the system.” Upon her release, Blakinger became a journalist whose many reports on incarceration—for the Marshall Project, where she currently works, and previously for the Houston Chronicle and other outlets—have resulted in much-needed reforms. Throughout her narrative, the author emphasizes the privileges that enabled her recovery, and she shows her commitment to exposing the practices that make Black and brown prisoners much less likely to succeed. Blakinger’s voice is frank but compassionate, as she lovingly but truthfully owns up to her mistakes. Her deeply researched analysis of the dehumanizing nature of incarceration is trenchant and infused with the passion of her personal experiences. The story moves quickly, populated with characters who are deeply flawed yet often sympathetic.

A gorgeously written, page-turning memoir about addiction, prison, and privilege.