Carolyn Williams

A Lorton Prison Project Carolyn Williams

This story captures the insight of a bright, intuitively smart young man who grew up in the low-income housing projects of Southeast Washington, DC, our nations capital city. His name was Jimmy Black Blango, better known as JB. He lived in the Barry Farms Housing projects at the height of a glorified drug market, in the midst of a culture of the celebrated thug life, gang violence, and mob-style crime. Aside from all that, it was a known fact that gangbangers pledged allegiance to serving time in jail. Even JB got caught up in a clean sweep operation on the streets of Washington, DC, and was sent down to Lorton to serve his time. From there, his status on the streets of Washington, DC, was upgraded to include street credits (i.e., the status of lieutenant) for serving a stench at what was once called the most notorious prison on the east coast, the Lorton Correctional Complex. Now that the prison was mandated by federal law to shut down, the criminal element on the outside decided to bring their drug enterprise on the inside. This was an effort to establish networks that reached beyond the district and extended to all points targeted south. Yet due to the pending closure of the Lorton Complex and the greed among thieves, backstabbing gangbangers, cold-blooded killers, malicious cutthroat staffers, and others caused the whole scam to blow up. At the end of the day, a nefarious culmination of unsavory conduct caused many elements of the Lorton Complex to suffer its unfortunate demise.