Keri Blakinger was an elite figure skater with a promising future. She constantly pushed herself to excel in both the skating world and as a student. Her quest for perfection led to an eating disorder, dabbling with drugs, and eventually the collapse of her skating career.
With her promising future lying in shreds, she threw herself into self-destruction with abandon. Drugs, particularly heroin, became her new obsession – using, selling, and selling her body to buy more. Despite all this, Keri nearly managed to complete her degree in English from Cornell University. A chance encounter with the police while carrying a Tupperware container of heroin put her on a somewhat different trajectory.
Keri would spend nearly two years in the New York prison system. While there she would find both sobriety and purpose – despite the system, not thanks to it. In prison, she learned how very flawed and unjust the corrections system is. On yellow legal pads purchased at the prison commissary, Blakinger began to document the brutal and bizarre world in which she now found herself.
Corrections in Ink is a memoir of Blakinger’s experience within the prison system. She details the dehumanizing conditions she and her fellow inmates faced and how desperately reform is needed. Her writing is a gut punch to everyone who never bothered to think too deeply on the subject.
Today, Blakinger is a staff writer with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that reports on criminal justice issues and the need for prison reform.