Finding Strength and Peace While Serving a Life Sentence

Jeffery Shockley reflects on the deep personal transformation, grief, and resilience that come with serving a life sentence, sharing hard-earned wisdom about aging, coping, and finding purpose behind prison walls.

Living With a Life Sentence

It’s my sincere prayer that whether you’re serving a short time or doing life on the installment plan, may you find peace in spite of any anguish behind extra baggage those around you might carry, sometimes matching your own.

I try to reside inside this space behind a past that will last longer than the lifetime I already have. No physical space can compare to the mental pains generationally sustained upon the individuals and families my actions have devastated. I’m grateful for this life I was appointed, but apologetic for the one I took.

There are intimate fears of living with dismay. Always bearing in mind so much time there’s left to do, my life sentence (death by incarceration). Continuing inside the mind of a broken system that’s unsympathetic. Giving no contemplation of any future beyond an occasion never to be forgotten and which history will never let go. Stored in the semblance of care, custody, and control.

Decades Inside Pennsylvania’s Prisons

For decades, the state of Pennsylvania has identified me as an offender, inmate, prisoner, #ES4796. I’m 62 years old, serving a prison sentence of life without the possibility of parole, plus two and a half to five years. I was a 37-year-old when I came into the state penal system 26 years ago—something I try to maintain with dignity regardless of how I may be treated inside.

A lot has changed over time, and not all benefitting the life-sentenced or long-termer, those with a minimum of 10 years. There was a time when families of life-sentenced men and women could have a picnic, bringing in food and spending the day together. Such events are no longer allowed.

Aging Behind Bars on a Life Sentence

I didn’t think of getting old before prison. I know we all get older, I just didn’t think of it in the terms I do now. Growing older in prison leaves behind many familiar faces that no longer have names. Those who were a part of this life with me, others from outside, who have died. Now free of this distorted and tattered reality. Time has that effect, I’ve learned.

The impact of a life sentence took some time to register in my consciousness, about three to five years. I can raise no defense, because while I was certainly old enough to have known better, it was still devastating waking to the reality of taking a life. I ponder who I am now.

Childhood, Military Service, and Lessons Learned

I’m an individual raised without boundaries, yet who suffered within societal limitations through a mind undiagnosed until the fourth or fifth grade. Culminating in special education classes until the 12th grade, and diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin.

Tapping into a lot of energy, I became good in sports, such as track and field and wrestling. I was undefeated in my weight class of 105 pounds and junior varsity. Unfortunately I was also a class clown and had disciplinary problems. One time, I threw lit firecrackers in the (empty) auditorium and was suspended from school. After senior year, I entered the military as a combat engineer, interested in heavy equipment.

Adapting and Surviving Inside a Life Sentence

Over the course of life, the mind changes. You adapt to situations no matter how many times you may have been in prison. Like in the military: Identify, improvise, modify, overcome, and adapt. This is my first time in state prison, apart from various county jails several times.

Now decades older, some things no longer seem to be as important. After navigating through the courts on appeals, losing contact with loved ones lost long before coming to prison, and working to sort out whatever issues existed in the cards life dealt me. I’ve embraced the hierarchy of prison. Do the time, don’t let the time do you. Don’t get got!

Financial and Personal Independence

I’ve become quite independent. In the past, I didn’t save or budget. Impulsivity partly due to addiction. Meager prison wages don’t make budgeting particularly necessary. Now, I manage life constructively, purchase commissary with a steady budget to save for the day I can get home, whenever that may be. Endeavoring not to depend or rely on others, without being a burden. Being older has conditioned me to sacrifice enough that if I don’t have, I probably don’t need it. Or I’ll wait until I can get it, if it’s that imperative.

The younger population, newcomers, seems to carry a former lifestyle here on the inside. Gambling, addictive behaviors and attitudes. Complaining when held accountable for their actions, being addressed by corrections staff and getting a misconduct. Having gotten older, I can tell the different calibers of individuals coming through.

Principles of Prison Survival

Lending and borrowing, getting into debt, minding other people’s business. Important precepts of prison you just don’t do. The difficult thing for me is observing people who are unable to care for themselves in this controlled environment. Understanding that there are a great many factors for their difficulties, burned bridges, and no family support due to an ugly history.

Establishing independence leaves minimal interaction with corrections staff. There are many others who might need assistance, as most are looking to make parole and require home plans or other arrangements for housing after prison. This can be a difficult place, but if you take the time and energy to accomplish positive goals, coping skills, with as much exhibited outside of prison, life would certainly change.

Breaking Cycles and Sharing Wisdom

Every human being has faults and limited abilities, moreso within the confines of a penal institution. Let’s not wait to be 60, 70, or 80 before breaking the cycle of dependence on a system operating more as a warehouse than corrections.

Getting older can garner virtual experiences in varying degrees of the outside world. Individuals who come in and out share how society is or has changed. Especially if you come across someone from an area you know, like Philadelphia for me. You learn all the hot places, fine establishments and old stomping grounds. Sadly, the ones coming in now don’t have the same courtesy or respect as they did back in the day when I came in.

Living With Faith, Hope, and Love on a Life Sentence

What’s upsetting is when people suggest how I should do my time, what I should be doing. “Come on old head, you got to loosen up!”

Maybe at times I come off as a miserable old man, as some old timers looked in my youth. I stay to myself, except for a select few who share my ideas and my style of doing time. I’m not interested in racial narratives or comparisons held my those with closed minds. I have no one but myself to be angry with, sitting here in prison. I committed a heinous act, and I’m paying the consequences. The same as others who didn’t ask for it.

Time can make you hesitant to interact with others. I live my life, do my time so I don’t drop into a rabbit hole of “who am I?” You have the law guys, the yard jocks, the Bible believers, and others who chase e-cigarettes or chew cans. On some days, the hard part is accepting that I’m okay being me no matter who might disagree.

We all have our 24 hours. Some people look at a life sentence like it’s an impossibility. There have been many before me, and sadly, there will be many after me. Serving a life sentence is a just reward for the actions I committed, and I’ve grown and matured through it. This is what I want for anyone around me, regardless of the crime or sentence.

There was a time when a life sentence garnered a certain respect, mystique even. Time is time, and all are lumped under the same umbrella. The trick is not to think you’ll die in here. Rather, live as normal an existence in cable-ready bathrooms.

Finding Freedom Through Writing and Helping Others

I enjoy music of all types, from the old-school classics to metal. From country to Bach, gospel, and everything in between. I like to write poetry, and I’m studying journalism through the Prison Journalism Project. I’m attaining freedom through the art of writing, meditation, studying the Bible, and having conversations with a select few. I like cooking, and was recently dubbed the Best Chef on the Unit.

I live for now, with no thought of tomorrow. I could care less about most of what people talk about. They only speculate, as if they know everything. Helping others might sound contradictory, but it’s a big part of my life here. It’s also in my job description as a mental health advocate (certified peer support specialist) in the Restricted Housing Unit. I live this life to give honor to the individual I killed, recognizing the pain I caused their family and shame brought on my own.

In one sense, I’m going to be okay no matter what. My faith, hope, and love. In these I am strongest. Greater is He who dwells within me than he who dwells in this world.

If I could have back just a moment of time for each time I didn’t live up to the potential or abilities others seemed to seen in me. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been born, and the world won’t have experienced the pains of so great a loss like yesterday.

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