John Feroli's profile

May 10, 2011

Between the Bars
New Writer Registration
P.O. Box 425103
Cambridge, MA 02142

To All Concerned:

My name is John Feroli, I'm 56 years old, single, Italian and staunchly heterosexual. (pictured with my mom at OCCC last year). I've been in prison since October 11, 1984 and continue to see my family weekly while maintaining strong ties to outside friends and the community.

I was sentenced to serve two consecutive first degree life sentences for joint venture/felony murder for my alleged participation in a double homicide that occurred on October 8, 1984 in the Manumet section of Plymouth, MA. I have a bonafide and "factual claim of actual innocence," which is currently being reviewed by the "Innocence Program," a relatively new branch of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, (CPCS), and I have volunteered to submit to a polygraph. More on COM. V. FEROLI later.

For now, and pretty much from now on, this blog is dedicated to "the other side of the story." Ever since we were kids we were all told by our parents, our teachers, our clergy, the police and the criminal justice system that "there are two sides to every story." Yet, when it comes to the so-called "correction" department, the only side of the story that anyone hears comes from the prison officials. So, every report and article contained in this blog will be material that the DOC doesn't want anyone to know about. But, I can assure all concerned that every word will be 100% accurate and truthful.

At the outset I want to make it perfectly clear that the overwhelming majority of men and women working within this prison industry are good and decent and honorable people just doing a job to support their families. Unfortunately, like all other walks of life there are cancers that contaminate the healthy. And these cancers are the ones responsible for making the prisons and the community unsafe for everyone. The cancers are the ones Ill be writing about.

For me it's very simple. The tax payers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts entrusted the Department of Correction with more than a half a billion dollars of their hard-earned money to rehabilitate, correct, and prepare offenders for release. Instead, they torture, demean, abuse, exploit, and enrage. Then after decades of treating humans like animals, they release a Dominic Cinelli, or a Butchie Corliss, or a Gerald Hill,... on an unsuspecting society. My blog is a glimpse at why men leave prisons more violent than when they entered, why they can't make it on the outside, and why they'd rather die in a shoot-out with cops than return.

Between the Bars,
p. 2

After my arrest I was held at the Plymouth County Jail for the next 20 months locked in a 6 by 9 foot cell for 23 hours a day. I was fed in my cell with meals delivered in styrofoam food trays, and before long I realized that I could use this styrofoam material to build things. I started by making towel racks and small end tables for my cell. Then I began building doll houses and miniature furniture. And that's how I passed the time.

When I was transferred to MCI Norfold I was the Chairman of the toy program there, which was an entity of the Lifer's Group. We worked year round making wooden toys for mentally and physically handicapped kids who were confined in area hospitals. Some of the kids had no family, and would have had no toys for Christmas if not for the Norfolk Administration implemented a strict tool-control policy. The workshop was closed and the tools confiscated.

In April of 2000 I was sent to the maximum security prison in Shirley, MA. where I started using styrofoam trays again, this time to make Catholic and Celtic crosses and picture frames. Because the Souza-Baranowski prison is locked down 20 hours a day, again it was considered a positive and constructive way to pass the time. After two years there I was returned to the Old Colony prison in Bridgewater, MA. and immediately started working with food trays making more crosses to send home for Christmas. That's when I found a 200 pound cancerous lump on my back, and his name was Captain Paul A. Gordon, Jr. A poisonous coward and bully, Paul Gordon and others like him are the reason I felt the need to write the following article. It is these few hateful and meanspirited men who are creating a violent and dangerous underclass inside prisons, and releasing them on an unsuspecting society.

Please read the enclosed report on the History of the Massachusetts Advisory Council on Correction by CJPC intern Patricia Vincent, as well as the many other reports, documents and articles that I will be posting and writing to explain how offenders are treated and what really happens inside Massachusetts prisons prior to release. And I promise you will begin to understand why offenders are leaving prisons angry and tragically unprepared.

The enclosed photos of the Catholic and Celtic crosses are made entirely from styrofoam food trays/foamboard, and colored with a mixture of Columbian coffe and creamer. I use the raxors from Bic shavers to carve and design. And because of my craft, I've been issued 19 disciplinary reports and sent to the hole 3 times in 2½ yrs.

Very Truly Yours,
[John Feroli's signature]
John Feroli, W-42512

[Photos of 14 different, ornate crosses with intricate Celtic detailing. At a glance, you wouldn't know they're made from foam food trays!]
[Among the cross photos is a photo of John Feroli with his arm around a lady, stamped with the date 04/29/2010 in the bottom right corner. Both have gray hair.]