Jack Henry Abbott
| Jack Abbott | |
|---|---|
| Born | Jack Henry Abbott January 21, 1944 Oscoda, Michigan, United States |
| Died | February 10, 2002 (aged 58) Wende Correctional Facility, Alden, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1981–1987 |
| Subject | Prison life |
Jack Henry Abbott (January 21, 1944 – February 10, 2002) was an American criminal and author. He was released from prison in 1981, while serving sentences for forgery, manslaughter and bank robbery, after gaining praise for his writing and being lauded by a number of high-profile literary critics, including author Norman Mailer. Six weeks after being released, he claims to have mistook the intentions of a person who displayed no threat objectively, fatally stabbed him, was convicted of manslaughter, and returned to prison, where he committed suicide in 2002. He self-described his life as being a "state raised convict", spending much of his life since age 12 in confinement in state facilities, including solitary confinement. He wrote that because of confinement with other violent offenders from whom he could not escape, he developed a subjective perspective that every encounter was potentially threatened.
Abbott was born at Camp Skeel in Oscoda, Michigan, to an Irish-American soldier and a Chinese prostitute. According to his book, In the Belly of the Beast (1981), he claimed to have been in and out of foster care from the moment of his birth until the age of nine, at which point he started "serving long stints in juvenile detention quarters". As a child, Abbott was in trouble with teachers and later with the law, and by the age of 16 was sent to a long-term reform institution, the Utah State Industrial School. According to Abbott, his mistreatment by the school guards left him scarred for life. He also became a chronic bedwetter.
In 1965, aged 21, Abbott was serving a sentence for forgery in a Utah prison when he stabbed another inmate to death. He was given a sentence of three to 23 years for this offense, and in 1971 his sentence was increased by 19 years after he escaped and committed a bank robbery in Colorado. Behind bars, he was rebellious and spent much time in solitary confinement.
In 1977, he read that author Norman Mailer was writing about convicted killer Gary Gilmore. Abbott wrote to Mailer, alleging that Gilmore was largely embellishing his experiences, and offered to write about his time behind bars in order to provide a more factual depiction of life in prison. Mailer agreed and helped to publish In the Belly of the Beast, a book on life in the prison system consisting of Abbott's letters to Mailer.
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