Dwight Jackson writes about crack addiction and burglary, tracing how his first break-in, at 23 years old, led to arrests, escape attempts, relapse, and a life that kept circling back to prison.

At the age of 23, I did my first in-house burglary with people asleep in their home. It was three in the morning. I was with my girlfriend’s brother, and he was schooling me on house burglary to make some money.

Was I nervous?

Hell yes.

The first few apartments he went into by himself while I watched to warn him if anyone approached. It was so quiet. I could hear everything, even my heart beating at a fast rate of speed. My eyes were bugged, and I was scared.

My girl’s brother went into the apartment through a bedroom window. I had to give it to him — that motherfucker had nuts. He came out of the apartment the same way he went in, except he had a purse when he came out.

We went into an alleyway and went through the purse. While we were going through it, we heard a voice saying, “Don’t move.”

My girl’s brother looked at me, and I looked at him. Then we both looked at the guy who had spoken. It was a security guard for the apartments. He did not have a weapon or anything, so we ran.

The next time we went out burglarizing, he let me go into the apartment first. I slid a window to the apartment open very slowly and stepped up on the window ledge to enter.

I could feel the heat radiating from inside the apartment. As my foot touched the ledge of the window, that is when the shaking started. I stood there shaking for at least five minutes as he stared at me.

Damn, I was scared.

All of a sudden, a calm came over me, and I entered the apartment. I could hear everything: the refrigerator running, clocks ticking. It was so quiet. It was extremely warm in that apartment.

At this time, I burglarized for the sake of burglarizing. I was not a drug addict. I did not need the money. I continued in this behavior until I was arrested.

My first arrest happened when I was inside an empty apartment at two in the morning. When I was exiting the apartment, I saw a police officer behind a tree outside with his pistol drawn. I ran out the back and jumped a fence, and there was another police officer waiting for me with his pistol drawn.

When he said, “Freeze,” I stopped and put my hands up.

I felt nothing until I was in a tank at the jail with other inmates. My life was going nowhere. I had no goals, and incarceration did not trouble me.

Though I had a girlfriend I was living with, I really was not concerned about her. She knew that I was burglarizing and accepted the rewards when I prospered.

I was sentenced to two years in prison. When I look back on that now, I remember my girlfriend saying, “Let us get married so we can have conjugal visits.”

I got married just to have sex.

No standards or integrity.

When I was released from prison, my wife was there waiting for me. We prospered for a while until her mother introduced me to crack, and then I introduced it to my wife.

We lost everything we had, even our dogs.

I did not know about addiction, so I continued in this behavior and went back to my old trade of burglary. I was arrested over and over again until I was facing 25 to life.

I kept telling myself I would rather die than spend the rest of my life in prison. There were times that I wanted to die.

What gave me hope was that I had a chance to escape, and I did, with nowhere to go.

As I jumped down off the roof of the Sutter County Jail, my whole life passed before me as I landed on the ground. As I got up running, I realized I had nowhere to go.

I would have to burglarize somebody to get a car and money to get away from Yuba City before they found me gone from the jail.

I was scared, and I knew somehow I would make it through this shit. I felt so alone, and I even thought about going back and turning myself in to the police.

I never realized that no matter what happened, I would have to steal to survive. This thought never entered my mind as I planned my escape.

That same night, after I escaped, my old nemesis surfaced.

Crack.

Before I got out of the city, I went and purchased some crack after I had done a burglary. The crack loosened up my worries.

I was arrested a month later.

I had made it as far as Chico, California. I was arrested after I had been out all night burglarizing apartments.

I thought I had gotten away, for I was headed back to the motel I had rented with over $700, jewelry, and the thought of smoking me some crack until I got broke.

I sat there in Butte County Jail facing 114 to life. There was going to be no deal for me. They wanted to make an example out of my Black ass.

I sat there in that county jail almost two years, fighting the three-strikes law, knowing there was no hope for me. My only chance was to escape once again.

And I did.

I was faced with the same demons that had caused me all my drama all my life. I headed in a direction with nowhere to go. The crack surfaced again for three days, and I decided that I had enough.

I threw my crack pipe away and headed for Texas to stay with an uncle.

Here in Texas, I finally had a chance. I did not want any crack, and I got fake identification and a job. I prospered until I let my son’s mother come to be with me in Texas.

I had forgotten that I could not be around someone using crack.

I had been clean for almost a year, and when she came, I was back on crack within two weeks. Then she left me and went back to California after I had lost my job and sobriety.

I kept telling myself, That dirty bitch, not wanting to be accountable for my actions.

Facing 114 to life, and hooked again on crack, I just did not give a damn. I smoked crack daily and burglarized to support my habit. I knew I was going to jail. It was just a matter of time.

Once again, I was lost with nowhere to go but jail.

If I were not such a coward, I would have jumped off that bridge into traffic. I chose prison instead, and I have been here ever since.

Thirty one years.