Taped above Lavonta Henry’s bed is a note from his 7-year-old son. Written with a few backward letters, it says, “Papi, I can’t wait for you to come home. I love you, Jayden.”
Henry keeps it taped inside his cell at the Indiana State Prison. It hangs near a thick stack of photos of himself with Jayden and his two other children, ages 6 and 4. Many of these photos show the kids during their visits to the prison. One shows him in camouflage fatigues when he served in the U.S. Army National Guard.
“This one of us is my favorite,” Henry said, holding one when he was a new teenage father at age 16. “It’s back before I made some wrong decisions and got locked up here.”