Onyx White, an aspiring rapper, is attempting to launch a music career and build his life in Boston. And he is simultaneously attempting something that may prove even more difficult: avoiding the parole violations that land many returning citizens back in jail.
“The scary thing about parole is I don’t have to do a crime to go back to jail — being around the wrong people, or they can think I’m around the wrong person,” 30-year-old White said. “You violate, you’re going to the maximum security.”
Indeed, one-third of returning citizens his age return to prison within three years, according to state data.
White has a curfew and is monitored around the clock via an electronic ankle bracelet. As he put it, “on one side I’m attached to chains, on the other side I’m reaching and trying to get to this goal.”
In 2010, White was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of 71-year-old Geraldo Serrano, a beloved convenience store clerk in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.
White was 16 years old at the time of the shooting and ended up taking a plea deal that allowed him to be released from prison 12 years later.
He was among some 1,700 people with criminal convictions released from Massachusetts prisons in 2022. Their experiences — rarely told and often hidden from public view — are the focus of the GBH News reporting project Life After Prison.
GBH News spoke with one of Geraldo Serrano’s relatives, who said the family bears White no ill will: “He needs another chance … he’s learning from his mistakes.”
This short film follow’s White’s journey in the first years after his release. He wrote the song “Don’t Judge Me” when he was facing life in prison.
