Former inmates turn it around and change the narrative of the streets
A new life requires self-discipline, support and ability to cut old ties
In the most challenged neighborhoods of New York’s capital city, the decadeslong rivalry between “uptown” and “downtown” can feel as permanent as the pavement, as constant as frigid winters.
Uptown was West Hill, downtown the South End. By the time an impressionable Mundhir Connor moved in the 1990s from Brooklyn to the South End, it was already a story that had been written in blood.
One afternoon, as Connor and a friend walked home from school, they were ambushed by “uptown” youths who viewed them as rivals — even if Connor did not. About 13 at the time, he escaped with a black eye. But it would be decades before he escaped the Albany streets. He sold drugs, was shot in the head and was later identified as a member of a South End gang. He served more than eight years in federal prison, where he experienced depression — and eventually, the epiphany that changed his life.
Facing a trajectory that for many young Black men and women in America often includes recidivism, more prison time and often violent death, Connor changed the narrative.
“We all have talent; you have to find it,” Connor, 42, told the Times Union. “I think it’s all on the individual, whether you want to better yourself or not. Me personally, I told myself I was never selling drugs again. I would never sell drugs. That’s just how I felt, and it
worked for me.”
Similar changes turned around the lives of Raymond VanHoesen, a convicted drug dealer now praised by the same federal prosecutor’s office that once pursued him, and Dyjuan Tatro, who was convicted in the same federal gang case as Connor but who is now a congressional aide.
The Times Union interviewed the men and other former federal convicts as well as federal probation officers, prosecutors, a defense attorney and a federal judge, among others, to gauge the scope of the challenges involved in turning away from gang life and incarceration — specifically, the fallout from two federal gang cases that toppled the West Hillbased Jungle Junkies gang in 2006 and the South End-based Original Gangsta Killers in 2009.
The glimpse into a handful of life stories suggests the importance of personal reflection, steady employment, and the ability to maintain positive relationships and jettison negative ones. The perils of failure can be steep, even fatal: After being released from prison, 31 of the 55 defendants in the two Albany gang cases violated conditions of their supervised release at least once. The reasons varied — new criminal charges, associating with gang members, drug and alcohol use, prohibited travel.
Some former gang members turned their lives around only to lose them to violence. Former OGK member Elijah Cancer, who became an energetic anti-violence advocate, was trying to break up a fight at a South End street party in July 2018 when he was shot to death at age 32.
Just days later, 31-yearold Khalil Barnes was gunned down; Barnes’ family said he also was trying to turn his life around. Ahmad Fleming, 33, was shot to death in 2019 in West Hill. John Welcome, 35, was also shot dead last year. All were former Jungle Junkies members.
Bad company
In a candid letter Tatro wrote to a federal judge in 2011, he acknowledged the odds facing him and other young men in his situation.
“I remember being 15 or 16 and thinking that a friend of mine would make it beyond those invisible barriers; would make it out, go to college, succeed, as if we (weren’t) trapped, and I guess that in a sense we were,” he wrote now-Senior Judge Gary Sharpe.
“In retrospect I realize that I had written myself off; accepted failure, by wanting for someone else what I should have wanted for myself also,” Tatro continued. “It is truly sad for a teenager to have to think such thoughts, and yet not to know them for what they are. I remember my first time in jail and calling home telling my mom that everything was alright, but everything was not alright. I should have been hysterical, my freedom had just been taken from me, but again I accepted it as a given, because subconsciously I had known that I would be there someday.”
Tatro thrived in the
Bard Prison Initiative, a Dutchess County program that provided him a chance for an education. He would eventually become a senior adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“I am not an exceptional person, rather, I had an exceptional opportunity,” Tatro said in an alumni voices section of the Bard Prison Initiative website. “The education I received, and two degrees I earned through BPI, radically changed the trajectory of my life. If more incarcerated people had access to programs like BPI, more of them — like me — would go on to defy expectations of who college is for and where it might lead.”
Connor and VanHoesen found help in the Intensive Re-Entry Program available through the federal court system in Albany.
“It’s got to be you being introspective, first and foremost,” VanHoesen, 51, told the Times Union. “If you don’t think about how people affected your life prior to your incarceration and you don’t evaluate those types of relationships, you’re never going to come out and have a different idealism of who not to deal with.”
VanHoesen, known as “Sham,” was convicted of possessing cocaine with intent to sell it. Federal prosecutors described him as a large-scale crack dealer.
Growing up, VanHoesen said, he failed to make wise choices in the people he ran with. “You have to keep people in perspective of where they belong in your life,” he said. “Because if you don’t, then you’re just going down the same path.”
Federal probation officers, who monitor the formerly incarcerated, told the Times Union that part of the plan includes employment — one the person preferably enjoys, which has a schedule and routine and adequate pay. Getting skills for a job is key as well.
“We talk about it: changing the thinking, changing their mindset, and changing their values,” said U.S Probation Officer Daniel Casullo, who coordinates the reentry program in Albany. “Ideally, someone uses their time in custody to reevaluate what’s important to them, and they put that plan into practice while on supervision. Until someone is ready to do that, they are at a much higher risk to recidivate.”
‘It lies to you’
The difference between freedom and prison, even life and death, can depend on many factors, including the ability to avoid substance abuse and bad company. Some might even want to move out of the region or at least out of Albany to break those old ties, according to federal probation officers.
At 42, Connor laughs as he recalls the moment he became part of uptowndowntown combat. Boundaries have changed over the years, along with the names of the gangs at odds.
He remembers few after-school opportunities for young kids. On Green Street, youths played
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basketball — but Connor viewed them as losers. His eyes were drawn more to Broad Street, where drug dealers appeared to lead a glamorous lifestyle.
“When you’re a little kid, it lies to you,” Connor said. “You think that’s something cool. So you want the cars, the jewelry, the women ... but you don’t see what comes with it. The kids on Green Street? Those were the smart ones . ... They all did something with their life.”
Connor, who was known as “Major” and “Montana,” said his role models never taught him and other impressionable youths how to obtain good credit or how to own property: The same people staunchly protecting their respective patch of neighborhood turf legally owned not a single square foot of it. Those elders had in turn been led astray by their own mentors — it was the blind leading the blind.
“What is the point? It doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Connor was sent to prison and the state’s boot camp-style “shock” incarceration program, only to go back to dealing drugs within weeks of release. But his final, more lengthy incarceration afforded Connor a chance to look deeply within himself. He had been dying on the inside, he said, even if the depression wasn’t obvious.
One day in a federal prison in Petersburg, Va., Connor spotted an older inmate in a wheelchair making a leather pocketbook. It piqued his interest. He joined a hobby and craft group; he took notes. Over time, Connor discovered he possessed a talent. From pocketbooks, Connor branched out to making T-shirts and hoodies.
That final stretch in prison, Connor told the Times Union, was “the best thing that ever happened to me.”
It was a long road to redemption, one that would require intense self-focus and support. Connor learned he could use the same energy he had employed to sell drugs to market his clothes. He had found his niche. Many others in similar situations did not.
“If you’re hanging out with the same people you were committing crimes with, going to the same places and not making any positive change in your life, how do you expect to be successful?” said U.S. Probation Officer Christine Connolly. “You’re doing the same things and expecting a different result. That’s not success.”
Connor became a star graduate of the Intensive Re-Entry Program. It was not the first time Connor had been in a program to help inmates after prison, but this time it worked.
To stay in the program, participants have to show up in U.S. District Court once a month to have their progress graded by a team that includes a probation officer, federal prosecutor, federal public defender and magistrate judge. The objective is to complete 12 credits in the in-court portion of the program, which can take a year or longer. The person, if successful, then returns to regular supervised release for a year to complete 12 more credits before being released on their own — a passage marked with a graduation ceremony.
“We look for people who have had an extensive criminal history — not people who have one or two arrests, but who have been in the system a long time,” said U.S. Magistrate
Judge Christian Hummel, who presides in Albany. He noted that Connor had 11 prior arrests before he entered the program; in the program, he thrived. “I’m a huge proponent of the program. It gives people an opportunity at a second chance.”
Many participants have never held a legitimate job, cashed a paycheck, had a bank account or any credit history. Some have lost their ability to drive due to alcohol-related vehicular convictions, which hurts their ability to commute to a job, Hummel said.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Gene Primomo, who represents defendants in the program, said the single most rewarding part of his practice was to be involved in something that helped defendants overcome obstacles even in the face of lengthy federal sentences.
“I think the chance for redemption is enormous,” said U.S. Attorney Carla Freedman, who leads the 32-county Northern District of New York. “You’ve got people who are keeping the participants’ feet to the fire. They have real goals that they have to meet, and if they don’t they’re held accountable. But there’s also a tremendous amount of praise and, I think, satisfaction on the part of the participants that they see. They check off all of these goals: They get a job, they get housing, they get training. And they see the benefit of the rewards and getting back into their communities.”
Staying clean and having a job is key, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Barnett, who attends monthly meetings. “The people who come to that realization are the ones that are going to succeed,” he said.
Once out of prison, Connor encountered a former associate who offered him an opportunity to sell drugs. Connor said no. Within months, the former associate had been arrested again. “For (Connor), it was a mindset that he was done with that former lifestyle,” Casullo said. “He’s a smart guy and was focused on his family, improving his credit and financial foundation, and developing a legal business. He was just on to other things. That former lifestyle was over for him.”