Category: Front Matter

Posted on

302 Corrections Drive

Title: 302 Corrections Drive
Author: Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett
Rev History
.00 - 04/11/2017
.01 - 03/20/2022

A note from an Author: What is this?

This is many things, some of which you may discover here and some of which you may discover on your own.  This is a living project that will, in places, literally beg for your participation and further action. You are welcome and encouraged to talk back to this/us and make your feelings, your further research and your observations known: You can comment on any specific section with your comments, evidence or questions; You can track the Black Unicorn Press down via social media; or you can find your nearest Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett and give them a piece of your mind, or a snack. Doing this work requires energy.

302 Corrections Drive is also living, in the sense that it is continuing to grow and change. Unlike other sections of the I F’d Up digital Archive, 302 Corrections Drive falls apart if broken up too thoroughly into its many different pieces and it can be read here digitally in its entirety, from start to finish, just by selecting title from the Menu. It is also incredibly long to read in one sitting, so the menu is broken up into the different acts to help you navigate back to past or future sections of readings. As major changes occur to any section, the Black Unicorn Press will add a Revision history note to that section and, hopefully notify readers via social media platforms. 

Will it work? Let’s find out together.

Posted on

This is a note on forms and functions.


Twenty-years ago I started asking the question: Why prisons?


More specifically, I was curious about what value prisons contributed to society and to whom within society were they most valuable. Today, I still have no good answers to that question, but I have learned that the question is easier to wrap my head around when I localize my search parameters. 


As I write this, 302 Corrections Drive, Newport, AR 72112 is the address of McPherson’s Unit. Arkansas’ largest, and only maximum security, prison for women. 


It has a story and I set out to find it.


Instead I found something else.



Posted on

This is an investigation.



I believe this to be true, even though experts in the field have told me it is a not. An investigation is formal. It is systematic inquiry. It follows rules. It appeals to authority and begs for institutional legitimization. It is official.


I am not.


I am terrible at following rules. I am an unappealing representative to figures of authority and I question institutional legitimacy at every opportunity. The most formal thing about me is the bowtie tattoo on my neck and—if this is going to be a space for honesty—it’s not even all that great of a tattoo. It is the kind of tattoo a friend gives you because he wants to be a tattoo artist but will have to nearly die from a heroin overdose before he is ready to pull his life together enough to become one. It is the kind of tattoo that flatters only in its promise that there are stories above and below the surfaces we see.


I make no pretenses to be objective or to “tell it like it is,” because I am ideologically driven and uncompromising in my beliefs. I lie to protect the secrets of others while I bury my own secrets in plain sight. I refuse to be listened to, and demand to be questioned, even as I keep making statements that sound a lot like answers that aren’t mine to give. It probably sounds now like I am disparaging myself and that too would be a lie.


I love who I am. I follow my heart with the full capacity of my bodymind.  I am one of the most passionately and dangerously honest people you will ever meet, and I will stop asking questions of my many selves and the worlds we inhabit when all of us end up dead.


This project, 302 Corrections Drive, is me, asking you, to join us.


To dive in and start asking questions that may not be ours to ask, but are desperate for the asking.