Decades Gone By For more than three decades, I have watched life continue without me. During my incarceration, my father passed away. My grandmother died. Nearly all of my aunts and uncles are gone. I was unable to stand beside my family at their funerals, embrace the people I loved one final time, or grieve alongside those who knew them best. My children grew into adulthood while I remained behind prison walls. They built lives of their own, married, and became parents. Grandchildren were born whom I have never held in my arms. I have missed birthdays, graduations, weddings, births, funerals, holidays, and thousands of ordinary moments that most people rarely think about until they are gone. Time is one of the few things in life that can never be restored. I cannot recover those years, and I cannot undo the choices that brought me here. At twenty-two years old, I was immature, reckless, angry, ignorant, and unprepared for adulthood. I lacked discipline, education, emotional control, and the ability to think beyond the moment in front of me. I came from an environment filled with negative influences and developed destructive patterns of thinking and behavior. None of that excuses the harm I caused. I accept responsibility for my actions completely and without qualification. But there is another question society must eventually confront: Can a human being become something more than the worst thing he has ever done? I believe the answer must be yes. If people are incapable of meaningful change, then rehabilitation is little more than a word we place on prison walls. If education, accountability, maturity, remorse, and decades of demonstrated growth can never matter, then we must ask what the purpose of a correctional system truly is. During my incarceration, I made a decision that I would not allow the worst choices of my youth to define the entirety of my life. I chose education instead of bitterness. I became a certified paralegal through Blackstone School of Law. When educational opportunities became available through prison tablets, I completed course after course. As additional college opportunities became accessible, I began pursuing an associate degree with the goal of eventually earning a bachelor's degree. I did not pursue education for recognition. I pursued it because I eventually understood that ignorance had limited my choices and contributed to the destruction I created around me. I no longer wanted to be someone who destroyed things. I wanted to become someone who built them. Over the years, I married a remarkable woman who challenges and inspires me to continue becoming a better man. Together, we have built a small and growing business that provides seasonal employment and continues expanding. Under the names of Kris Allison and W. S. Hurst, we have written books together on historical fiction, Norse history, mythology, philosophy, and personal development. Our most meaningful project is Steadfast, a recovery-oriented program designed to help people struggling with addiction develop stability, accountability, discipline, self-reliance, and purpose. That work is deeply personal to me. I understand what can happen when a young person lacks direction, wisdom, education, and self-control. I know what destructive thinking looks like because I lived it. I also know that people can change because I have spent more than thirty years attempting to do exactly that. Prison reform should never mean forgetting victims or pretending serious crimes did not occur. Justice matters. Accountability matters. Public safety matters. But justice and redemption do not have to be enemies. There should also be room in our correctional system to recognize genuine transformation. A twenty-two-year-old man and a fifty-six-year-old man can occupy the same body while being profoundly different human beings. Decades of aging, education, loss, reflection, responsibility, and rehabilitation can change how a person thinks, how they respond to conflict, what they value, and what they hope to contribute to the world. Not everyone will change. But some do. For those who have spent decades demonstrating responsibility, pursuing education, mentoring others, building skills, maintaining meaningful family relationships, and preparing to contribute positively to society, there should be meaningful ways for that transformation to matter. I cannot change the past. I cannot return to my children's childhoods, attend the funerals I missed, or hold the family members who died while I was incarcerated. What I can do is determine what kind of man I will be today. Today, I am a husband, writer, student, mentor, business owner, and grandfather. I am a man who has spent decades trying to create value where I once created destruction. Whether I remain incarcerated or return to society, I will continue trying to be useful. But I also believe our communities gain something when a correctional system is willing to recognize real rehabilitation. A society must protect itself from people who remain dangerous. A just society should also possess the wisdom to recognize when people have genuinely changed. Prison reform is not about forgetting the past. It is about accepting that, while the past can never be rewritten, human beings should still have the opportunity to write a different ending. — Chris Allison