The insider on the outside

California's prison problems run deeper than overcrowding. Dennis Malone can tell you all about it.

by Kelly Davis

In his early 20s, Dennis Malone made life difficult for his Grant Hill neighbors.

"I provided most of the drugs for this area," he says, his eyes scanning the street. It's a Friday afternoon and things are pretty quiet in a neighborhood where bars on windows and yards wrapped with chain-link fences reflect the area's past more than its present. Three decades ago, when Malone went from high-school basketball star to drug kingpin, his neighborhood was, as he puts it, "the most drug-infested area in San Diego."

In federal prison, Malone studied to get his state minister's license, and at Donovan he headed a chapter of Convicts for Christ—he'd actually been ordained in the Baptist church when he was younger, long before he fell in with gangs, though he says he stopped going to church when he started selling drugs.

He earned the nickname "Preacher." He remembers a speech he gave to a group of inmates just before he was paroled, prompted by the "you'll be back" comment that guards and other inmates tell someone who's about to be paroled.

"I told them that the only way I was coming back here was in a position to help."

Six years after he left Donovan, he came back as a counselor, working in the same pre-release program that he'd participated in.

"Oh, man, it was a trip," he said. "I almost didn't walk in.... It was like reliving a nightmare, but I'd made a promise.

"It took me six years to do it, but they were all still there—the guys he gave the speech to—and they were all still in the yard. Gave a lot of credibility to what I was saying."

Write to kellyd@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com

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