Shaka Senghor — a best-selling author who spent 7 years in solitary confinement during a 19-year sentence for murder — discusses forgiveness and flaws in the criminal justice system

• Shaka Senghor was convicted of murder as a teenager in the '90s. He spent nearly 20 years in prison.
• Since his release, Senghor has turned his life around and uses his platform to help and inform others.

At 19, Shaka Senghor was convicted of second-degree murder for the 1991 killing of David Vaughn. He spent his next 19 years in prison, including seven in solitary confinement.

While in prison, Senghor received a letter from Vaughn's godmother, Nancy. In it, she said she forgave him for killing her godson.

Senghor has frequently discussed how their written correspondence helped push him in the right direction. He emerged from prison a new person — a mentor, an author, and a leading voice on the issues within the US incarceration system.

Senghor authored the books "Writing My Wrongs" and the newly released "Letters to the Sons of Society" and founded the organization Redeemed Sole. He also won the 2016 NAACP Great Expectations Award.

Although he does not expect forgiveness, Senghor discusses the importance of healing between perpetrators and communities.

He spoke to Insider about his journey. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How did your upbringing put you on a path towards prison?

I grew up in a household where my dad was in the Air Force. He also worked for the state and my mother was primarily a homemaker. And I'm one of six siblings. My mother had three children when she met my dad and then they had me and my two younger sisters. And, unfortunately, my mother was very abusive: physically, verbally, emotionally. And when I was about 13- or 14-years-old, I decided to run away from home. And when I ran away, I thought someone would take me in and just raise me with love and care that I think all kids are deserving of. Maybe around the first two weeks or so, I was just going from garages — friends' garages, vacant garages — to basements.

Eventually, an older guy in the neighborhood said he had an opportunity for me to make some money. And that's how I got just basically seduced into the crack cocaine trade. And so that started when I was around 14. And I sold drugs on and off for the next five years.

But three years into that culture I was shot multiple times. I was standing on the corner of my block on the west side of Detroit. After I was shot, I came back to the neighborhood, and I just started carrying the gun every day. And I also started kind of making up this narrative in my head that if I found myself in the conflict again, I was going to shoot first.

And 16 months later, in July of 1991, I shot and tragically caused a man's death and was sentenced to a total of 17 to 40 years in prison. I ended up serving a total of 19. Seven of those years were in solitary confinement.

What things do you think work and don't work in the criminal justice and prison systems?

I honestly don't think anything works about the criminal justice system — 70% of the people who are incarcerated end up back in prison. So I don't think that the system is working at all.

I think those of us who get out, and who have got out and have been able to figure out a way to make a life for ourselves — typically, it's kind of self-motivated, or [we're] extremely fortunate to have people in our lives that either provide us with a different perspective about life or provide us with the resources to build a life.

For me, I was really fortunate to have met some incredible mentors while I was inside. These were men who were serving life sentences. They guided me to books, and my thirst for reading and challenging ideas really just awakened me and the potential that I could live a life different than what I was living.

I started journaling. I started meditating. And, eventually, I started writing. And once I started writing, I figured out that this was a pathway forward for me — that it gave me an opportunity to at least provide the basics for myself. A lot of the introspective work I did gave me the grounding to know that I can overcome adversity and figure things out. But it was very tough.

It's nearly impossible for somebody to get out of prison and to thrive. A lot of people get out and survive, but it's really hard to get out and thrive. And at the level that I'm at is definitely not something that's the norm.

What do you think is the most pressing reform to the criminal justice system right now?

I think there are a number of things that can be done immediately.

One, I think that we have to decriminalize mental health challenges. The reality of what I witnessed while I was inside is something that I don't think the American public even remotely understands in regards to how many people are in prison who have been failed by the mental health systems.

I think decriminalizing mental illness is important. I think overturning the role of how solitary confinement is used. It's really, really important.

Now I've been out of prison for almost 12 years and I'm still haunted by the reality of what I experienced being in solitary. And it's so damaging on a human level that it really serves no purpose other than to destroy the human spirit.

And I think decriminalizing drugs. I think that we should be able to manage people's addiction in a way that doesn't lead to them being incarcerated.

Can you tell me a little bit more about your time in solitary confinement?

I spent a total of seven years in solitary. The longest stretch was four and a half years straight. It was one of the most barbaric, inhumane experiences that I've witnessed up to this point in my life.

The way that the men were treated, who had obvious mental health challenges, was horrific. To see them restrained to their beds. To see them pummeled by the guards when they would extract them from their cells.

One man was so desperate after he was just harassed. He was the outwardly homosexual guy and officers just used to just like berate him, demean him, harass him to the point where he set himself on fire.

And after he set himself on fire they took him out of the cell, put him on suicide watch for like 24 hours. Brought him back to the cell, continued harassing him. He set himself on fire again.

There were a couple of guys around me who were labeled as cutters because they self-mutilated. And they would take staples out of magazines and cut their arms up.

One guy even swallowed a battery in an effort to end his pain. And so it's just really a horrible, horrible environment. And I, to this day, I don't know how officers who work in that environment even come out with their humanity intact, it's that barbaric.

Ideally, how do you think the justice system should look?

I think there are models all over the world where people are thinking about criminal justice as more of a social service to the community, and also the person who is accused of committing a crime.

For example, in 2015 I went to Germany to study their prison system. They have a holistic approach that once a person is arrested, they're working to ensure that person returns to the community healthy and whole. They make sure that while they're serving their sentence, they can still work. They still have access to spend time with their family in intimate settings. And I think that humane approach, and recognizing that a person is a citizen as opposed to an "other," makes a dramatic difference.

Speaking of barriers to "reentry," can you tell me about the struggles that you've faced in that regard?

When I got out of prison, it was nearly impossible to find employment through a traditional route. People were concerned about hiring me and outright refused to hire me.

At that time, my son was just born and I had been hustling books out of the trunk of my car.

But that wasn't quite enough to provide for my son. And it was that moment where I was like, "Man, society's just not going to give me a chance." I was fortunate to be able to use my talent and skill sets to start a mentoring program. I ended up winning a financial award for that. And then that organization ended up hiring me based on my actual talent and my work, but it was extremely difficult.

Do you believe that prisons should exist or do you think that those should be eradicated as well?

I don't think that prisons should exist. However, I know that they will probably always exist as long as we live in a capitalist society. Wherever there's capitalism, there's likely to be crime because there's going to be over-governing of communities where people don't have access to employment and they don't have access to capital. I don't think they should exist, but I think they will exist for a long time.

Would you mind telling me about the conversations that you have had with the family of David Vaughn and how they reacted to you?

So about five or six years into my incarceration, a woman named Nancy reached out to me and she shared with me that she was the woman who raised David. She was his godmother. I still have her letter. She reached out and she shared with me who David was as a father, as a friend, and how I had devastated their family.

And then she went on to say to me that, despite these things, she loved me and she forgave me.

When my memoir, "Writing My Wrongs," was released mainstream, I got an email from the news reporter I had just did an interview with. And she told me that David's wife, Kathy, wanted to speak with me. And I stepped outside of the event I was at, and her and I had a conversation. And, in that conversation, she said when she saw me on the news she was happy to see that I was doing the work that I was doing in the city of Detroit at the time, which was my mentoring work.

And she said she would love to meet and talk. She said that she forgave me. And then shortly after that, an interview came out that I did with Oprah on "Super Soul." And eventually, I got sued by Kathy. It went from forgiveness to a lawsuit.

I ended up winning the lawsuit. There was no grounds for the suit. But I went through a year of legal matters related to that. But within that, even within that spirit, whenever the Vaughn family was talking to my lawyers, they were always cordial, always respectful. She and I talked after things were resolved, briefly, and then we haven't spoken since then.

All in all, would you say at this point they forgive you? Would you like to be forgiven?

At this point, I'm not sure quite where they stand. My brother was just murdered this past July. And as a family, I know that healing takes time. Grieving is a process.

I'm sure that they don't quite understand things from my perspective of my experience. I learned a lot about David. David was really a victim of circumstance that had nothing to do with him. There was just elements that they probably would never understand, which is fair given that they're grieving their loved one.

When Nancy shared that she forgave me and when Kathy originally shared that she forgave me, it definitely brought a sense of peace to me. But I think more importantly for me has been what I've done post that event — whether it's in the community to prevent other young men and women from making the decision I made, whether it's really being an advocate for therapy for those who have been victims of violent crimes.

That brings me peace to see that I've been able to impact communities in a meaningful way in that people are really— young people specifically — are leaning into the message of living a more purpose-driven life.

You said the work that you're doing has brought you peace, but would you say that it's also helped you forgive yourself?

I think personal forgiveness has been a really long journey for me. I mean, there are moments where I'm triggered when I see other families suffering. And as I mentioned earlier, I had a real deep conflict with myself when my brother was murdered. I couldn't quite grieve because of the feelings of guilt that came up.

When I saw what my family was going through, I imagined what David's family went through. So to me, healing is a journey — it's a lifelong journey. There are things that come up that surprise me at times regarding my experience with my incarceration, my experience with being shot, my experience with being a perpetrator of a homicide. And so I'm still on that healing journey.