As the director of community outreach for a Louisiana halfway house, Ashanti Witherspoon now counsels recovering addicts and helps them become productive members of their community. Working with Angola authorities, he also provides orientations for inmates who are about to be released. He regularly speaks to youth and community groups about his experience and the transforming power of faith and hosts a weekly radio program in Baton Rouge.
"You can't allow the situations in the world around you to influence you in any kind of a negative way because if you do, the only person who is going to lose is you."
Ashanti Witherspoon was granted parole from Louisiana State Penitentiary in the summer of 1999, after serving 27 years of a 75 year sentence for armed robbery. "If a person gives up hope, that's the day you begin to die. That's what helped me to survive during my 27 and half years, always believing in one day something was going to change."
"Prison is very much a part of my life because I'm involved in prison ministry.... But no it's not a distant memory, it's still very much a part of my life.... You can't allow the situations in the world around you to influence you in any kind of a negative way because if you do, the only person who is going to lose is you."
He spent his 50th birthday as a free man and returned to Chicago for his first Christmas with his family in thirty years. "I feel a sense of excitement, I don't feel the anxiety. I can't make up for lost time, I can't make up for the years that have gone by. I'm going to start with that day, and just live one day at a time."
