I am Denucian Alina Durbin, host of Parents Who Think. In this episode, I'm joined by Eldra Jackson, former inmate, powerful speaker and co-executive director of Inside Circle. Eldra spent 24 years in prison. What he shares with us is not just a story about incarceration, but about what it takes to confront the parts of yourself most people would rather avoid.
I talk about trauma, responsibility, masculinity, parenting and what true transformation really demands. Not performative apologies, but deep, consistent change. This is not a comfortable conversation. It's a necessary one.
Just like 24 years in prison, yeah? What was your journey to that point? How did you find yourself there? Well, the short answer is I found myself in prison due to terrorizing the community.
I went to prison for several robberies, kidnapping for the purpose of robbery and attempted murder. But beneath that, there was a mentality that allowed me to rationalize that behavior, that allowed me to rationalize and normalize on the community and on the individuals and doing things of harmful nature to others and myself. Where did you pray along people and that mentality come from? Well, I would have to take you back to my early childhood, my formative years, and be in a victim of child molestation.
And that was very traumatic. And it set the stage and planted the seeds for me to determine within myself what power meant and what being in control meant and what dominating someone else meant. Being in control and having power meant harming someone else. It meant having someone else pressed under your thumb and making them do exactly what you wanted to.
And if they didn't do what you wanted to, you forced your will upon them to make them into your will. And it germinated in the back of my head for quite some time until I started to make choices to go out into the gutter and associate myself with the gang in my early teen years. Did you actually intentionally choose that? Or did you really not see any option?
Well, I definitely chose it. Growing up where I grew up in the early 80s, there were two groups really that had respect in the inner city. And the sort of respect that I saw and admired and wanted. And those two groups were athletes and gangsters.
And for most of my life, I was an athlete up to that point. And when that was taken away from me, I made a choice to go out into the gutter and begin to associate with people who I went to school with and played sports with who also happened to be gangsters. So for me, it was an easy transition because they were people that I knew and I was still chasing respect. It was only really athlete or gangster to glean respect from.
How come? Is it large enough? Do you think? It's definitely larger for me.
And it was larger for me at that time. That was the pigeonhole that I put myself into because of my limiting, my self limiting beliefs about what respect was. I grew up in a household that provided, you know, if had I been open to it, plenty of options. I could have, you know, took my school, stayed in school and gone on the college and become a lawyer.
So it's not like I was forced one way or another for me. What I wanted was to do exactly what I wanted to do. So what happened as a result of you wanting to just do the hell what you wanted to do? What version of a man did you create for yourself or a young man?
Well, the version that I created for myself was a game that I could do whatever. I moved through the world pretty much just doing whatever I wanted to do. And that left a trail of destruction in my way. I got hurt a lot of people and didn't care that I was doing it.
I didn't care if I hurt you so long as my ins were met. I didn't care what happened to you so long as I got what it was that I was looking for. So let's talk about the harm along the way because you've clearly done a lot of work. You know, just to be where you are, the man you are today as we speak.
Yeah, and it's obvious. What about the harm to those people that you didn't care about? They were part of your game. Are you come to terms with that within yourself but also with those people if you have?
Well, with some of those people, there's no, you know, physical, you know, manifestation of a face to face, you know, making of amends. Unfortunately, you know, the universe just does not work like that. But what the universe can do as it always does is provide a range of free will and as a form of restitution to the people that I have caused harm to in my life. What I attempt to do more often than not, I'm still human is to live a life that ensures that no one else, you know, suffers harm in my hands.
And I owe that to them. You know, I can't go back and undo anything. What I can do is live a life that demonstrates that what they suffered at my hand, no one else will and then trying to forge a path forward with a new purpose in life. And the only way to do that is to look self in the mirror and be completely honest because I can I can bush to you to know about I can't bush it myself.
Yeah, quite. You're in prison. You'll be to a starting the process of looking in the mirror and you join an inside circle. How do you make that leap?
Well, the leap was made for me. It was it was gradual. You know, I'm having to sit here and pretend like it was like, okay, one day I'm here and then the next day I'm like, okay, I'm ready for this. He just dove in.
Oh, it was a gradual sort of thing. Yeah. That progression started while I was sitting in solitary confinement. You know, I started to look at myself.
I started to look at my position because this was not the first time I had been in solitary confinement and something was telling me this will not be the last time you're in solitary confinement if you continue along this path. So having plenty of time in the hole to sit and think about that, sit me on that path. And then when I was released from the hole and sent to New Folsom, I let my homeboys, you know, people in the game that I was involved in on the street, I let them know that I was done with that lifestyle. I was doing something else.
I had a different plan for my life and in doing so I started to investigate different philosophical and spiritual disciplines, you know, searching for peace within myself, searching for a different way of being for myself. And that was a part of what drew people who were in inside circle to ask me to join because they could see that I was at a place within myself where I was looking to do something different. And maybe I was not certain, you know, completely with that something different was. How did the homeboys respond to your, you were changing your ways.
How did that go down? Well, they took to it, you know, kind of like fish, take the water because of the way that I presented it. It wasn't just. Well, I presented it that, you know, if you happen to see me across the yard, you know, and the white boys or the cribs or the Mexicans or whoever stop in my brains out, don't come help me because I got a plan.
And I've always been someone who was viewed as, you know, halfway decent in the brain department. So they were like, okay, yeah, he's up to something. You know, he's got something going on. And so they didn't really question that.
So, you know, once I got agreement there, I was like, and I'm flip sided at if you're on the other side of the yard and something's going down, don't expect me to come run across the yard because I'm not coming. And that was that, you know, that's kind of the opportunity for me to state my piece and anybody who has any objections to state their piece and we can go from there. You'd made that kind of spiritual foray to bring yourself peace. And I guess what else did you look at?
I mean, you were looking at all philosophies, were you? Yeah, I was looking at different philosophies. You know, I studied, you know, Buddhism, Taoism, different ideologies and things around the world trying to find, you know, an energy that fit me and where I was at because a lot of things I looked at and at least from spiritual perspective, thinking about religion, you know, a lot of them have the same tenets, at least on the outside, looking in and when you first go up into it, but then when you get into it, it's really just gang bang it because I know what gang bang is, you know, it's, you know, they start talking about, you know, everybody is equal and you want others and all that and then you get off into it and they start talking about, yeah, everybody except people who don't think like us, everybody except people who don't do it like this. Well, hey, I like it.
It's my game. It was quite the difference. Yeah, it's just another form, isn't it? Another way to separate people and indoctrinate people and get people mind control, crowd control.
And I'm not getting out of one, you know, structure of crowd control and falling into another. I could stay where I was at with the status that I had and be somebody. I'm not going to fall into something else and just be a nobody wanted to cheat. Okay, so you went through that, you know, it'll be a sheep and that's where is it?
Inside Circle, the invitation to join. What did that do for you? I mean, what did you discover when you joined it? Well, I knew a lot of the dudes are always familiar with a lot of the individuals who were in inside circle from other things that I was a part of and participating in.
So I knew that it was something different. It was something more mature. I just didn't know exactly what it was. You don't know exactly what it is until you step into that space.
I was definitely open to it. And so I accepted it. I was I was sponsored in by a gentleman who was already in the group and that, you know, you set me on a new life path, you know, I walked in that door and had it look back since. What happened for me and there are several men who I set in circle with who are now, you know, who have been allowed to come home.
They were granted parole. The difference for myself is getting to a place where I could recognize what they call causative factors. I could recognize what it was about me that enabled me to rationalize my behaviors in the community. And I could sit before a panel of what they call board members who are politically elected officials and speak to them for hours on end about my life from as far back as I could remember up until I walked into that room and communicate to them that I understand not just who I am today, but who I was yesterday and how I got to where I was yesterday and what mechanisms I have in place to not just understand that, but to make certain that I don't relapse into that person ever again.
I was parole on my third board appearance. Oh, wow. I said, you know, my first couple of times going to board and where a lot of people get caught up, you know, going through the process that I learned is that we don't want to face who we were and we want so much to get away from who we were and talk more about who I am today and show you who I am today and let's forget about who I was. Let's forget about the monster that I was.
Let's forget about the atrocities that I committed because that was so long ago and in order for me to really understand how I got to where I am, I need to be able to understand where I was and what contributed to that and what was going on with me at that time because I have demonstrated that what I have the potential to do. So who's to say that something won't happen and snap something inside of me and trigger me into a relapse of that person in order for me to have that, you know, under management, not under control, under management, I really need to be in tune and in touch and know where that came from and how that came to be. I have to be in relationship with that part of myself. Yeah, you can't sweep it under the carpet.
You can't not be in deep relationship with the monster side of yourself, can you? It's quite the opposite. It's always about me. Even if there are some external factors present, it's about how I choose to respond to those external factors.
Yeah. It's not about the external factors. It's about my response or reaction. It's about the choices I make in relation to those external factors.
And so one of the kind of nuggets of enormous wisdom here is that your story is a story of extremity. Yeah. And the pillar of what you've just said, the actual core of it is the same. No matter whether it involves prison, whether it involves our relationship to partners, our children, our work, obviously ourselves.
But it relates to all of us, doesn't it? It's always how we respond to something, not the actual circumstances. That's what it always boils down to. It's always the eye factor.
I'm deeply honored that you would come and share who you are and tell us your journey. Tell me your journey and share that with your listeners around the world. I so know you will have inspired so many people through this conversation. Well, you're welcome and thank you for having me.
Elder doesn't ask for admiration. What he offers is clarity. It's not enough to regret who you once were. You have to understand how you got there and be willing to meet that version of yourself, face to face.
That's not about performance. It's about integrity. Thanks for listening. And as ever, keep thinking, keep asking and don't turn away from the parts that need your attention most.