Everyone’s Obsessed With True Crime. Even Prisoners Like Me.

In the early aughts, when I was waiting on Rikers Island to be tried for murder, I had to watch what everyone else in the communal day room was watching on TV: shouts of “Jer-ry! Jer-ry!” and announcements that “You are not the father.”

After I was convicted, in 2004, and sentenced to 28 years to life in prison, TV would occupy even more of my time. Prisons do get cable: Normally, the population pays via things like fund-raisers and the profits from visiting-room vending machines. At Clinton Dannemora, a maximum-security prison near the Canadian border, I bought a 13-inch television from the commissary, and it felt like a privilege to watch what I wanted, alone in my cell. In Attica, where I transferred in 2007, we had the Oxygen channel, on which everyone would watch reality shows like “Bad Girls Club.” I enjoyed all the gossiping and scheming on “Big Brother” and “Survivor,” and when I put an ad on a dating website for prisoners I listed “The Bachelor” as my favorite show. The women who wrote to me related. I eventually married one.

Her name was Danielly, and she watched a lot of true crime. It made her so paranoid that she hung a bell inside her front door to alert her to intruders. Once, while she was visiting me, I noticed her peering behind us — she had recognized another prisoner from an episode of “20/20.” This happens to me now too: I’ll be in the mess hall or the yard and recognize someone from a true-crime show. He’ll be scooping oatmeal or exercising, and I’ll remember the re-enactment of his crime, the bludgeoning or the burying.

In 2016, I transferred to Sing Sing. By then, Oxygen had shifted from reality shows to true crime; the channel’s logo was even redesigned to resemble police tape. It would soon be airing a seemingly nonstop run of shows like “Buried in the Backyard.” For a few years I was transferred to a smaller prison in the Catskills, where we didn’t have in-cell TVs — but when it closed and I landed back in Sing Sing, I found that true crime had come to dominate what felt like every station. NBC American Crimes ran reruns of “Dateline,” “American Greed” and “Lockup,” which I once heard described as “prison porn.” (It’s strange to walk down the tier, look through the bars of someone’s cell and see a TV turned to “Lockup” — an inside look at prison for someone who is already inside a prison.) Merit TV had “Crime Stories With Nancy Grace.” As I write this, Court TV is running a marathon of “Interview With a Killer.”

More than half of Americans now watch true crime, according to one YouGov poll. (The F.B.I. reports that between 1993 and 2022, meanwhile, the rate of violent crime in the United States fell 49 percent.) We watch those shows in here, too. As true crime exploded in popularity, the demand for fresh content had producers searching for stories to tell, exhuming murder cases from years and even decades ago. This is how Danielly eventually found herself watching a true-crime show about me, a drug dealer in prison for killing a rival.

Some watch with the prison hierarchy in mind.

It was the fact that I had built a writing career, explaining to a curious public what it was like to be locked up, that made my crime compelling to producers. In 2018, after publishing a few features about the mental-health crisis in prison, I contacted a producer at CNN to ask whether she might put together a segment on the issue. She referred me to some colleagues at HLN, who were working with Chris Cuomo on a show about redemption. I thought it was going to be called “Inside,” but later learned the title had a second word: “Evil.” I suppose part of why I still sat for an interview was that Cuomo’s brother was the governor, the one person with the power to commute my sentence — of course I was trying to make a good impression. But I also hoped to show him that people could come back from their worst acts, and struggle their way toward becoming more than just murderers.

So in 2019, “Inside Evil With Chris Cuomo” aired the episode “Killer Writing,” and I found myself in my cell, watching a re-enactment of the murder I committed. The mug shot of the man I killed flashed on screens across the prison; I worried that a friend might recognize him and want to harm me. It’s hard, now, to separate what I remember about the night of the murder from what CNN depicted: the lurid sound effects, the confidence with which the shadowy figure in the trench coat fired the gun. I was ashamed of how pridefully I talked to Cuomo about my writing — right before the show cut to the family of the man I murdered, describing how my words in print caused them more pain. I can understand how any success in my life would hurt them. When his sister later asked that I not use his name in my writing, I appreciated her suggestion, and have respected her request ever since.

The TVs in our prison cells help to incapacitate us, which, along with punishing us, is one of the purposes of incarceration. But right now they are also serving a bizarre purpose: Cellblocks full of people who killed or hurt or robbed are watching real-life murders, kidnappings and robberies for entertainment.

Some watch with the prison hierarchy in mind. I recently caught up with Simon Dedaj, a friend of mine at Shawangunk Correctional, a maximum-security facility that houses high-profile prisoners. He told me he used to watch Oxygen’s “New York Homicide,” and he would often see its subjects in the cellblock or yard and bust their chops about it. “Guys are getting blown up left and right,” he said, their histories exposed via TV. But prison has a pecking order: Some crimes, like hurting women or children, land you low in its ranks, and someone with a heinous case might lie about it. Simon asked if I remembered a guy we both knew years ago. “Get this,” he said. “He told me he killed a cop, right?”

Recently, falling asleep to “New York Homicide,” Dedaj heard the guy’s name and perked up: It turned out the “cop” he was in prison for killing was a girlfriend who worked in a police crime lab. It wasn’t the first time the show had revealed something unsavory about someone we knew. “Everyone’s on edge about it. So they removed the channel,” Dedaj said — and replaced it with ID, another true-crime network.

One afternoon in the weight pit, I asked Cody Hernandez — “Ceeboy” — what shows he watches. “My girl’s got me watching them crazy shows on Oxygen,” he said. His fiancée is in graduate school, studying forensic psychology; she only started watching true crime because Ceeboy was in prison. Now he watches, too. His favorite Oxygen show is “Snapped,” which features female murderers. He and his fiancée tune in at the same time, usually on the phone, chatting while they watch.

I find myself switching instead to the Bravo network, where there are luxury yachts and tropical scenes on “Below Deck,” and the manufactured dramas of “Summer House” offer a reprieve from the real dramas of prison. True crime is essentially a kind of reality TV, but it is the worst kind. Instead of vicariously experiencing people’s competitive drive or desire for love, you grieve with victims, hate their victimizers, soak in stories of infidelity and betrayal and murder. It’s hard for me to picture why people sitting safely at home tune in for this carnage. But I imagine that, as voyeurs of our worst deeds, they feel reassured: Their own flaws, shames and secrets can’t seem so bad in comparison.

John J. Lennon is serving a sentence of 28 years to life at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York. He is a contributing editor at Esquire. His book, “The Tragedy of True Crime,” comes out in September.

Source photographs for illustration above: Dan Holmberg/Getty Images; Ron Chapple/Thinkstock, via Getty Images.