Sophia Mertson, Staff Writer
“Michael Henderson borrowed the .38 snub-nose revolver from his younger brother. He tucked it into a pouch cinched around his waist, but all that evening the gun beckoned him like a secret he couldn’t keep.”
These opening lines of Correction: Parole, Prison and the Possibility of Change, read aloud by author and journalist Ben Austen, begin to describe the night of Michael Henderson’s crime that would end up with him in prison for decades. Austen’s newest book has been praised by The New York Times, The Washington Post, listed in the latter’s 50 notable works of nonfiction in 2023, follows the stories of Micheal Henderson and Johnnie Veal, two black men who were sentenced to prison for crimes they committed as teenagers. In discussion with The Sewanee Review editor Adam Ross on Feb. 4, 2025, Austen spoke about the parole system, the systemic injustice rooted in
Ross began the discussion by asking how Austen became interested in parole for his next book topic. Austen explained that a fan had reached out to him after writing his previous novel High Risers: Cabrini Green and The Fate of Public Housing. The fan notified him that one of the men Austen mentioned in his book is still in prison and was eligible for parole. From this moment, Austen knew that he wanted to tell the story of people who had been stuck in the cycle of prison and parole. Austen explained in an interview why he believed sharing these men’s stories was critical to his message stating, “You have to actually experience something. and experience it in its fullness, and all its complications, and you do that by trying to live and experience it, and getting to know people.”
Austen spent over a year visiting Henderson and Veal in prison conducting interviews, conversing, and befriending the two men. He emphasized that “it’s about being the person who comes back” during his talk with The Sewanee Review. Writing about real experiences through a storytelling lens provides a more intimate experience of understanding the parole system. There are still challenges that come with trying to convey the complexity of the parole system in a digestible way, “It’s so much harder to tell a narrative of success. People look down on the purpose because it’s not dramatic. What does it look like for a person to serve 22 years or just get out of prison? Who’s working a job at a manufacturing plant? You could have a thousand of those stories and you have two stories that are dramatic, those are the ones that resonate and like to fill up all their head space.”
During the talk, Ross asked Austen what his role in writing this novel was. Austen leans towards advocacy for the parole system since he aimed to share stories of people who, in other cases, would never have had their stories shared. However, more specifically, Austen says that his role in creating this book is to show readers that change through parole is possible, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for the incarcerated. But most importantly that reassimilation is difficult and that there is still much that needs to be done. Austen noted, “Prisons have to change, too, [not just parole.] and they can’t be only criminals. They have to have rehabilitation as part of their DNA.” Austen sees the possibility for change. However, the current state of our rehabilitation system still needs to unravel decades of injustice so ingrained that many aren’t aware change is even needed.
While researching for his novel, Austen traveled to Finland and Norway to see how their prison systems differ. What he found was radically different from America. Their prisons focused on true rehabilitation grounded in re-assimilation into society. Prisoners were provided jobs, a community, access to see their families, and even allowed to leave the prison during the day and return during the night. Austen noted how when prisoners leave American prisons, “that is the moment when you need the most community. The death rate is six times higher, more people are homeless, and we’ve denied people citizenship and rights. We hinder them from movement, jobs, housing and we send people back to neighborhoods where so many people are already wrapped up in the criminal system.” Austen said that this strategy is statistically not effective, since “about a fifth or a quarter of all the people who enter, are there not for committing a crime, but for violating some technical aspect of their parole.”
When thinking about how incarceration affects less populated areas such as Sewanee and the Appalachian area, the stories of these people will often go unheard. Their stories are not sensational or radical, it’s easy to overlook how big of a problem incarceration is when the stories seem to blend. However, that does not undermine the severity of the issue, what Austen seeks to do is bring sensational and non-sensational stories into the spotlight. While Austen’s work takes place in large cities, particularly Chicago, the message is still applicable to an audience like Sewanee students who often see the stories of their surroundings and the people they love go unnoticed.
Austen’s book and discussion was a critical moment of education and awareness for the Mountain. Despite being separated geographically from big cities, rural Appalachia is still prone to heavy drug usage and high incarceration rates. The Appalachian Regional Commission stated, “In 2022, overdose-related mortality rates for people ages 25–54 was 64% higher in the region than the rest of the country.” This can be connected to the exclusionary nature of the Appalachian region, which limits resources to help those struggling with addiction like rehab centers and methadone clinics. This lack of resources allows people to use drugs and when they don’t have the resources to get better their chances of incarceration become higher. Austen said that, “Tennessee’s incarceration rate is just eclipsed only by a couple of states like Mississippi and Alabama and then [globally], El Salvador.”
However, what Sewanee does have to offer is a wealth of diversity in perspectives and experiences. This converging of ideas and identities is what Austen noted as an important part of the parole process, saying, “One of the things that also felt powerful about just sitting at some parole hearings is that Illinois is a crazy state in terms of geography. And so you have these board members from all over sitting there, trying to hammer out some notion of what justice is, and the fact that they’re together, those kinds of communications feel essential.”
With most of Sewanee’s student population being out-of-state, the ability to have healthy and educational conversations around incarceration in Appalachia can become more diverse by using the lived experiences of Michael Henderson and Johnnie Veal and Austen’s research as an example.