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Life in Prison LIFE" in PRISON When I was your age, thought it would be fun to live in prison." I am writing from San Quentin state prison in Northern Califormia," Stanley Williams, writes to teens in his book, Life in Prison. (Williams with Becnel, 2001, p. 13) "For 17 years I have lived here in a small cell on death row because I was convicted of killing four people. San Quentin is no place you'd ever want to be. it's dangerous here - you always have to watch your.

No one is safe, not even the guards. it's also lonely here. When I was your age, I thought it would be fun to live in prison." (Ibid.) Life in Prison purports the thesis: Beware...Be Aware - in prison, a person loses not only his/her freedom, but ultimately his/her self; his/her life.

A ics in this book range from debunking myths about prison being a "gladiator school" (Ibid.) to revealing truths about experiences that make prisons "living nightmares." (Williams with Becnel, 2001, back cover) Through his books, Williams aims to educate and warn young people not to make the same choices he did. (Ibid.) Book's Relevancy Williams, while serving time, chose to try to warn youth that prison was one hellish place they needed to do everything they could to avoid going to.

His book proves relevant to the prison subculture as he debunks myths glorifying prison and reveals prison as it is; not the fantasy world some youth see in their minds. Beware.. Be Aware (Thesis Development/Summary) The wrong choices he made that earned him time on death row, Williams admits, in part, stemmed from his admiration of "Rock..

[who] had been imprisoned, for murdering his father, to beat up [his] Rock's mother." Rock referred to the prison's he had spent time in as gladiator schools and bragged about how prison constituted a place where a man could prove how tough he was. To Williams and others who listened to Rock, the stories of bloody knife fights and big, buff men seemed enticing. At a young age, Williams decided he wanted to have huge arms and a muscled chest and had his picture taken into prison yard. (Ibid, p.

14) In time, when Williams began to serve time for murder, however, he learned being inside prison was nothing like Rock's stories led him to believe. To be a place men regularly lose touch with reality and go "stir-crazy." He talks about what it is really like to spend a day in prison; the degradation of experiencing a strip search; the relentless, rancid rules; the hole; the fear of violence; violence; the never-ending violence. Williams reveals gut-level truths about how prisoners get homesick; that they miss home cooking.

He relates true accounts of other gang members, like himself, who ended up in prison or dead. The book, as Williams determined when he decided to write it, did not sugarcoat "what goes on in prison." (Ibid., p. 12) What goes on in prison, what Williams warns about over and over, this writer concludes, are loses; lives wasted. The following "Timeline" recounts Williams' or "Tookie's" life: Dec.

29, 1953 -- Stanley Tookie Williams III...born in New Orleans Charity Hospital to a 17-year-old mother and a father who deserted the family before Williams' first birthday. 1959 -- Williams and his mother ride a Greyhound bus to California and settle in an apartment in South-Central Los Angeles. Williams recalls it as an affluent-looking neighborhood -- "a shiny red apple rotting away at the core." 1971 -- Williams joins the Crips street gang, already formed by high school friend Raymond Washington.

In one version of the story, the original name of the gang was the Cribs, but drunken members of the gang routinely mispronounced the name as Crips, and it stuck. A rival gang member murders Washington in 1979. 1976 -- the U.S. Supreme Court allows capital punishment, suspended in 1967...to resume. Feb. 28, 1979 -- Prosecutors say Williams and three friends smoke PCP-laced cigarettes and drive to an industrial area east of Los Angeles in search of a place to rob.

The four find a convenience market, and...Williams takes the lone employee, Albert Owens, 26, to a back room. Williams shoots out a security monitor and then kills Owens with two execution-style shots to the back. The robbery netted Williams and his associates about $120. Williams...consistently denied killing Owens. March 11, 1979 --...three of Williams' friends -- all with criminal histories and motivation to lie, Williams says -- testify that he confessed to the killings. A ballistics expert links a shotgun shell at the motel to Williams' gun.

Williams has also steadfastly maintained his innocence in the Yang killings. 1981 -- Williams is tried and convicted in Los Angeles Superior Court of all four murders, plus...sentenced to death. He arrives at San Quentin's death row on April 20. 1987 -- Williams is placed in solitary confinement for 6 1/2 years after committing a string of violent incidents behind bars, including assaults on guards and other inmates. 1988 -- the California Supreme Court affirms Williams' death sentence, and he files his first federal appeal to the U.S. District Court.

1996 -- Williams, with co-author Barbara Cottman Becnel, publishes the first of a series of anti-gang books aimed at children, Gangs and Wanting to Belong. April 1997 -- Williams writes an apology for his role in creating the Crips street gang. "I am no longer 'dys-educated' (disease educated). I am no longer part of the problem. Thanks to the Almighty, I am no longer sleepwalking through life," Williams writes. 2001 -- Williams publishes a memoir of his years behind bars on San Quentin's death row.

He says the tone of the book is intended to warn kids away from following his life of crime. "To get a feel for what it's like to live in a prison cell, test yourself," Williams writes. "Spend ten hours -- nonstop and alone -- in your bathroom." Williams is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Oct. 11, 2005 -- the U.S. Supreme Court denies Williams' petition for writ of certiorari, which asked the high court to review the lower court rulings in his case.

December 2005 -- the California Supreme Court rejects a request to reopen Williams' case because of allegations that shoddy forensics connects him to at least three of the shotgun murders. Dec. 12, 2005 -- Gov. Schwarzenegger denies Williams bid for clemency. In a written statement, he says: "The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts in this case." Dec. 13, 2005 -- Williams is executed by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison.

(Tookie's Path, 2005) In his review of Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About it, Stovall (2001) notes that Terry a. Kupers, M.D., this book's author, presents a debate regarding prison reform and "offers proposals to lessen the dehumanizing aspects of.