…to protect the guilty.
I grew up before the internet. If you’re old enough to say that then I’ll bet you occasionally Google old friends names to see what’s up with lost connections.
That’s precisely what I was doing back in 2005 when I found the Department Of Corrections website and inmate locator feature.
Most of the folks I used to run with are dead or in prison so I decided to enter some names in the search box.
There are more than 2.2 million people incarcerated in US prisons right now. Some of them are my oldest friends.
The honkies in this little painting are three of my earliest stoner buddies. The youngest bro on the right I met in 1975 when we were both 11 years old. The oldest is on the left. He sold me my first ounce of weed in 1976. It was ‘Columbian Gold’ and cost $35.
These dudes are bad-ass but they’re not bad people. They were poor and had more challenges than opportunities. Now they’re casualties of the stupid fucking drug war and their lives have been wasted.
Left and middle brothers have been serving 25 years to life (since the mid 1980’s) as habitual felons because the drug game was all they ever knew.
I used the inmate mugshots from the DOC website to make this painting.