The time took away from me as I sat in prison for twenty straight years has taught me valuable aspects of life, I better understand than before. My name is Thomas Hurts, I am a forty-six-year-old white man from Sacramento, California. From age twenty-three to forty-three I was an inmate at San Quentin State prison in California on two charges of man-slaughter and one account of burglary. I was a young, dumb, broke adult when I committed the crimes I confessed too, hungry for any change I could get in my life. For the next twenty years in prison I was a part of one of the most ruthless prison gangs that exists in the United States, the Aryan Brotherhood. My story begins with the hatred that raged in me for most of my life.
As I look back upon my childhood and my upbringing, it sure was not the sight of something pretty. In fact, I believe the way I went about my childhood has to do with how I turned out as an adult. This goes for most people I’d like to think, the actions of someone at a young age carries with them into adulthood. It’s the building blocks of our lives, and reflects to adulthood. In my case, I grew up in an environment that scars me to this day. At forty-six it still twists my stomach with some of the things I grew up around. I grew up with only my mother Kate to care for me, my father I’d never met. Apparently, he fled across country as soon as my mother gave him word that she was pregnant with me. My mother and I lived in a single room apartment in the poverty filled suburbs of Sacramento. She worked from dawn to dusk, being waitress at a local restaurant in the afternoons, and bar-tending in the evenings. She’d consistently come home late at night liquored up and always with another man to hang with. My mother didn’t have time to care for me (that’s what I like to think) but truthfully, she chooses to neglect me. It always seemed as she cared for other men rather than her only son. She never grasped the concept of being an actual mother to me, offering no type of love or affection. Never have been given those emotions that most children receive from their parents. It only added the fuel to the fire.
Middle school and high school came and flew by in what seemed like little time. That could be to the fact that I wasn’t in school much of the time. I was either ditching with my buddies to smoke weed and hangout, or being suspended from school for plain recklessness. If I could remember right, I believe it was over two dozen times I was suspended from school. Whether it was fighting, talking back to staff, or having drugs on me, school just wasn’t my thing. Being held for eight hours a day as your told to do pointless school work didn’t make much sense to me. But putting in the bare minimum, I finally received my high school diploma after five years. With college obviously so far out of the picture, I turned to the streets to try to hustle to survive. I mean, that was the only thing I had really known at that point. How to sell drugs and finesse other’s out of their money. That’s how I’d been getting by ever since I was twelve, why go work in some place I absolutely hated and end up getting fired. My future was uncertain at that point, just getting by day to day grinding it out.
At twenty-three my life took a major turn in direction. One summer evening, a couple of friends and I chose to rob this pizza parlor late at night. They were a 24/7 pizza by the slice type joint, we thought that robbing it would get us a couple hundred bucks. During our snatch n go mission, things really went out of proportion and totally out of plan. Instead of a two minute, in and out with the money gig, it turned out to be something a bit more reckless. In the grand scheme of things, (I don’t like to get into much detail as it mentally upsets me till this day) my buddy shot two of the worker’s in the shop dead. We escaped with what little money the register had, into our get away car to only be stopped a few blocks away. As it turned out I was charged with two accounts of felony man-slaughter, and one account of felony burglary. I was denied bond, not that I would even be able to pay for one if I was given one, and took the plea deal announcing my guilt. The plea bargain cut ten years off of the thirty I was looking to stand at trial. I was off to prison at twenty-three years of age, and not no ordinary prison, I was going to one of the toughest prions in the country, San Quentin State Prison.
Arriving to prison is just as anyone could imagine, absolutely terrifying. I had no idea what was going to happen to me on that first day, let alone for the twenty other years I’d be stuck there. Ruthless was the golden word on how to describe a place like San Quentin. Maybe hell would align closer to it, but for the most part, every aspect related to that place was pure evil. My first week in had started off as every other new inmate had experienced their first week, misery. I was harassed almost immediately by the rival gangs and races. It was made crystal clear in the beginning, if you don’t share the same skin color, they’re the enemy. I learned that really quick as in the first week I was jumped by black gang members in the yard. It was a message to be sent to all the rookies in prison, as well as a reminder to all already there, that they were the one’s calling the shots around there. As the struggle continued into my first few months at San Quentin, I looked for anyone or anything that could stand to protect me. The correction officers, or guards as everyone called them, proved to be no help whatsoever. Going to a guard for help was asking for a target on your head. Snitching and siding with the guards was never an option for any inmate, as you’d instantly be labeled a snitch and never to be trusted. Trust was a necessity in prison, it’s how you were labeled and judged by other inmates. If you can’t be trusted, you’d never receive any favors, nor have many friends. With this in mind I decided to go to the people that resembled what I had, white skin.
The people I had decided to align with were known as the gang called the Aryan Brotherhood. There beliefs lay in realm of a white supremacy ideology. Their history is believed to be the first white supremacy prison gong founded in the United States. Upon approval of admission from high ranking members, I was to prove my loyalty to the gang of brothers. As a rookie to the gang it was initiation to beat the hell out of a rival gang member in the yard. Just as I had been jumped days earlier, it was my time to show if I was to belong inside a gang that proved to be so cruel and racist. All in all, I committed the assault on a Latino in another rival gang and was sent to solitary confinement for a month. Following my awful punishment, I was permitted entry into the Aryan Brotherhood, sworn protection from the gang. I was protected by a force that could do practically whatever they liked behind prison walls, and that made me sleep a lot better. But reaping those rewards, my role in the gang was to commit whatever acts of violence or other illegal things in order to stand in the brotherhood.