I’m white, middle class, and have two parents who are still together. I didn’t try drugs in high school; instead I recited the Bible. I have blue eyes, dark brown hair, and I’m an inch over six feet. I went to college, played baseball, and traveled to Australia on a missions trip.

Statistically I shouldn’t be here, in federal prison, nothing more than inmate 32201-171. I should be successful, married, and a pillar of the privileged community. I should be worried about my children being corrupted by people who see life differently than I do. Instead I’m here, not with fellow statistics, but with men who think and feel and see. Men with talents, hopes, and dreams. Human beings stuck in a cycle where only statistics are seen.When I look at the system from the inside, it lights a flame within me, a flicker that sparks a desire to change the way people see my friends, the way people see me. I am so much more than the perpetrator of a “West Coast to East Coast Marijuana Distribution Scheme.” We are so much more than recidivism rates, conviction rates, and statistics on crime.

To me, the most infuriating part is what these statistics are used for: convincing people—the kind of people I should’ve grown up to become—to pay for more prisons, more police, and more hate. Giving promotions to people who don’t see others as human. People who view taking men out of their families’ lives as a stepping stone to personal goals. This system is broken, but the statistics that are me and the people around me keep moving it along.I understand that people need us to be statistics. If we are real men with real children who miss us every day of their lives, then we become human. If we are human, we are worthy of having a voice. If we have a voice, people might see what I see every day. What I see is so much more #human.