Jeffery Gerritt: The difference we make is all that matters

Monday, in Detroit, marked the first time I had seen Darrell Siggers and Darryl Jamual Woods since they had come home four years ago, after spending decades in prison. I had known them for 12 of the years they were locked up. Back then, instead of Kangols and sports coats, they wore orange and blue jumpsuits, courtesy of the Michigan Department of Corrections.

I had wondered what it would be like to see them on this side of the walls, as free men living full lives. Both are leading anti-violence and prisoner reentry initiatives in Detroit. Mr. Woods, 48, is a governor’s appointee to the state Appellate Defender Commission and works with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. Mr. Siggers, 58, assists prisoners, former prisoners, and their families through his nonprofit company, Access Plus. Both have spoken to the Michigan State Legislature and at numerous colleges and conferences.

Strangely enough, seeing them again in different clothes, different circumstances, and a different world didn’t seem strange at all. As we embraced in the lobby of the MGM Grand, I felt like we were all where we were supposed to be and had arrived without missing a beat.

But the journey here was long and perilous. Getting into prison is easy. Getting out can take a minor miracle. Mr. Siggers and Mr. Woods had been wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Mr. Siggers spent 34 years in prison. In 2018, a newly formed Conviction Integrity Unit in the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office vacated his sentence. Investigators found flawed witness testimony, falsified evidence, and a botched ballistics report from Detroit Police had contributed to his wrongful conviction. Mr. Woods spent 28 years in prison before former Gov. Rick Snyder commuted his sentence.

In prison, both had transformed themselves. Mr. Woods helped found a nationally renowned Youth Deterrent Program. Mr. Siggers became an accomplished jailhouse lawyer. When he entered prison at 20 years of age, however, he was, in his own words, a “functionally illiterate man-child who could live only day-to-day, trapped in a culture of crimes and drugs, in the ghetto of his own mind.”

That people can change is not an abstract ideal for me. It’s a concrete reality I’ve witnessed, over and over, in writing about prisons and the criminal justice system for three decades. If we eliminate second chances, we renounce the very quality that makes us human: the ability to reflect, empathize, and change.

As a columnist and editorial writer for the Detroit Free Press, from 2000 to 2013, I had contributed, in a small way, to the release of Mr. Woods and Mr. Siggers. On Monday, they showed up for me, getting interviewed for an awards-show broadcast recognizing the winners of a national journalism competition. Whatever small difference I had made in their lives was now being paid forward in a big way.

Darryl Woods and Darrell Siggers, and many others like them, have taught me an invaluable lesson: In the end, all that matters is whether we leave the world a little better than we found it.