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In what ways did people show acts of kindness to each other in prison?

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Make sure you read this article about Eli Darris before he visits us tomorrow.

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One day when he was 19 years old, Elizer Darris reached a turning point.

He was lying on the floor of his prison cell, awash in water from an overflowing toilet, with smoke billowing over his head.

"I don't want to die like this," he thought.

That day comes to mind now, as Darris finishes his first year outside the prison system that was home for more than half his existence. His life seems full of possibilities now, but it is also full of risk: notably, the chance that, like so many parolees, he will wind up back behind bars.

Darris knows the risks as well as anyone. Still, nothing on the outside seems as dangerous as that day when he was 19, facing suffocation in solitary confinement.

He had reached that critical moment through events of his own making: At 15, he killed a man and left his body in a ditch. He led a violent life while locked up, getting into fights in the St. Cloud prison and helping to incite the riot that now threatened his life.

With no more than a seventh-grade education, and having left what he called "a wake of destruction," Darris seemed likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars - what there was of it.

"I found myself laying in a little bitty cell in a little bitty town I'd never heard of, in a little bitty prison," he recalls now. "I decided to just kind of get it together."

He started paying attention to older inmates who had reached out to mentor him. He finished his high-school education, earning a GED. That led to an associate of arts degree. And he got married - to a woman he met and corresponded with from prison.

It was his wife, Shaundelle, who came to pick him up when he was released on Oct. 17, 2016. She thought her husband would want to savor the moment. "I thought you'd want to go outside and look at the trees and nature," she recalled. "And you were like, 'No!'"

"Trees and nature?" echoed Darris. "I didn't want to see the trees, I didn't want to see the birds. I wanted to see the road."

Nor did he waste any time in disposing of his old wardrobe. "It's in the trash, actually," he told a visitor on his first full day out of prison. "I just took it and - shoes, shirts, socks - it's gone."

Darris had left the free world as an eighth-grader, and was returning as a 32-year-old. He and Shaundelle were kind of like newlyweds, living under the same roof for the first time. But Darris said everything felt natural.

"I'm just happy to be here, happy to be free, happy to have woken up with a lot of natural light in my apartment," he said. "It's a beautiful apartment. I have a beautiful wife."

Darris might never have made it here. He was what they call a lifer, just like the dozens of offenders still serving life sentences in Minnesota who were under 18 when they committed their crimes.

After the murder, Darris was certified as an adult and originally sentenced to life in prison. The only possibility of parole would come after 30 years. He appealed the first-degree murder charge and won. A second-degree murder charge stuck, and he was resentenced to 25 years.

In Minnesota, with good time, inmates can be let out after serving two-thirds of their sentence and finish the remaining third on supervised release. That doesn't sit well with the family of Cornelius Rodgers, the man Darris killed.

"I can't accept that," said Kenneth Connelly, the victim's brother-in-law.

"I don't care if you're 13, 14, if you commit a murder like he committed at 15," he said. "And you're out at 32? Come on."

Darris doesn't expect the family to forgive him, or to believe he deserves a second chance. All he can do, he said, is focus on doing right. Not just for himself and his family, but for his community.

"And then hope, not demand, but hope, that people will see - and that his family members would see - the absolute effort that I have put in, and that I continue to put in, in order to make things different," he said.

An inmate's first year of freedom is a significant milestone. Figures from the Justice Department say 4 in 10 released prisoners are rearrested during that time.

But if they can stay out of trouble that first year, their chance of recidivism drops. In his first year out, Darris ran into some bumps - but he also enjoyed some remarkable successes.

For starters, he had a job almost from the moment he walked out the prison gates. In fact, he landed the job while he was incarcerated, after he cold-called the employer from the Stillwater prison. A week after his release he was at work, selling magazines by phone.

But he had bigger ambitions, and soon he was applying for other jobs. In the year since his release he has sold watches, worked as a bouncer at a nightclub and started a consulting company. And though he can't vote until he finishes his supervised release, he landed a paid job in politics as field director for Minneapolis mayoral candidate Nekima Levy-Pounds.

At the same time, he's been trying to smooth the path for others who are coming out of prison. He meets with people in power - like prosecutors and judges - to offer an insider's view of criminal justice. The access he's been given is mind-boggling, even to him.

"I was just in the joint!" he marveled. "I was sitting on a hard cot looking at the TV, probably thinking to myself, 'When is Matlock coming on?'"

Darris found another calling, and one that pays: He became a motivational speaker. Nonprofits, schools, colleges and corporations have invited him to share his story of personal redemption. In classrooms, he tells kids to make good decisions now, while their lives are still on track.

Yet even as Darris was racking up professional successes, his marriage was heading off the rails.

One of the advantages Darris had coming out of prison was the home life that awaited him. He and Shaundelle had been together for 10 years, despite her family's objections.

"I made the decision, you know, to stand by him," she recalled. "And made sure my family knew this is my decision, this is what I'm going to do ... . You're going to support me or you're not, but I'm still going to be with this man for the rest of my life."

By the end of the year, that future no longer appeared so certain. After spending so many years in prison, Darris seemed to be trying to make up for lost time: door-knocking for the election, organizing neighborhood cleanups, arguing for lighter sentences for juvenile offenders.

"I am just getting out of prison. I am professionally attempting to grow myself out," he explained. "These are agendas that I've set and dreamed about for many years, and I'm able to push these now without asking for someone's permission. I can just do it."

And he began to feel that Shaundelle wasn't there for him.

"One of my biggest surprises has been the lack of support," he said during a joint interview to mark the anniversary of his release. "You know, here I am, I'm literally flying around the country now. I've been invited into just unbelievable spaces. And so when I look to my left, Shaundelle's not there. And while I look to my right, Shaundelle's not there. She wasn't at Howard University when I was speaking."

"You're able to do those things because of what I'm doing in the back," she replied. "You got to speak at Howard because I drove 17 hours to get you to Washington. I can't go to you speaking at high schools ... because I'm working."

"I apologize I can't be there at every event that you do," she said.

Shaundelle added that, while she's proud of Darris and his accomplishments, "I focused so much on you, I fell and lost myself."

"Where do you see us in five years?" Darris asked her.

"The P.R. answer is 'together,'" she answered. "Happy, loving. Hopefully a child, at least one. The reality? I honestly don't know."

"Me either, quite frankly," Darris said.

As tears ran down Shaundelle's cheeks, Darris hugged her. But the hug didn't last long. Darris had to run off to another speaking engagement.

Exactly one year out of prison, he needs to keep moving.

Editor's note (Nov. 3, 2017): A photo that originally ran with this story has been removed and replaced with a new photo.

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Life after lockup: An inmate's first year out

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One day when he was 19 years old, Elizer Darris reached a turning point. He was lying on the floor of his prison cell, awash in water from an overflowing toilet, with smoke billowing over his head. "I don't want to die like this," he thought.

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Do you feel like always being busy, and occupied has taken a toll and strained you? Like your mental health?
Simon H

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Is the reason that you out here having freedom right now is because you wrote those different  book ?

Ferdowsa mahamed

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Did you come to of the p

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Did you come to of the person

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what was your exerience like in jail? Jonah R

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What was going through your mind when you entered the prison, what about when they reduced it. What was your emotions after you have been released
-Abdullahi Nor period 3

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Did the feeling of being in a cell change after years of being in one?
Ethan

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did you learn something being put in jail? and how did u feel for the first time when u want to jail?can you visit someone in jail if you are on probation

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how does prison schools
different than the regular schools?

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what pushed him or motivated him to start changing? What limit was there?

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How did you change to whole new person?

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how did you feel in the prison the first day you went to prison?
what is the moment that you hate in the prison a way they tread?
how did you feel when you got arrest ?
do you know why they arrest you is there something you did that was right?

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what was it like to go to school in prison and regular public school

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How hard was it to get a job when you got out of prison?

Khadija Ali

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Why do you feel it's important to share your story with others?

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Do you feel proud with all your accomplishments?

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What did you benefit and take away from Prof. Appleman's class?

Did the inmates in prison guide you right or wrong?

What was it like to stand in court?

Abdirahmaan Ainab

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What motivated you to finish your education and how did u get a job after you get out of prison?
Was hard to find a job after what happen to you and your past?
Do people judge you based you on past life?

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When you were first imprisoned, how did you think your future was going to be like?

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how many years did it took to finish GED?

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How much of an impact do you think you could have on other inmates?

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what are you  experience in prison and how did you learn these experience?

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Was there a specific moment in prison that inspired you to obtain your GED

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Why did he kill that man?

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Now that you are a free person is it hard finding a job?

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I was wondering how long it took for you to be able to vote after you got out of prison? And when you were first incarcerated did you know you would lose so many civil rights?

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How did getting married in prison effect prison life for you?

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how did u feel after you were released?

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- Was there a specific moment in prison that made you switch paths and try harder/be better
-how did your time in prison affect your life afterwards? What changed, how did you feel, was there anything in prison you missed?

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What was going through your head when you walked into the prison

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how did you go to school while you were in the prison and how did get married and you were in prison too?

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Yonis Dahir
What made you kill the man

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why did you kill the person ?

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why didn't you decide to kill someone, and where you mad?

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why do they re-sentence you for 25 years?

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how did he married and got a job while still in prison ?

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Yonis Dahir
How do you that you're out of prison now.

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how do you feel after all things has
ended ?

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what was reason of killing  a person?

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Yonis Dahir
what kind of advise would you give to a young person?

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Who helped you the most during your time in prison.

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where did you get the job right away?

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How did you like your writing classes? Were they enlightening?

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why was the reason you killing a person and how did prison change your life after you been out?

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how do you go to prison?
what crime did you did?

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What made you change your mindset about your life around the age of 19?

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how did the older inmates give you advice?

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In what ways did you feel "free" in prison?

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What motivates you to write books and how did you starting writing?
If there one thing you would chnage in prison what will be?

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what kind a medical service do prisoners receive.

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After you have committed a felony are you able to vote again?

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What do you regret the most

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how life is like in jail?
did u feel many things about freedom like when you were in jail and don't have freedom to come out anyhow/way?

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why did you kill the prison? did u know the prison

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how did your life changed and what did you you change?

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How does the prison have changed you??

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why did you have to kill the man?

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When you were released from prison, did anyone ever recognize you just from your poetry that was published?

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How does it feels to be free out after long year in prison?

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do always wants to help the prison?

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How much did incarceration change your mindset on life?

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How much did incarceration change your mindset on life?