Eighteen years, nine months, and three days.
“I calculated it all the way down to the day,” Eric Justice Bethea said.
Bethea counted the amount of time he spent locked up in 9 different prisons.
“My attitude was that – get it how you get it,” he recalled.
However, Bethea does not want anyone feeling sorry for him.
Bethea told WUSA9 he was convicted of murder and is choosing to share his story in hopes of helping someone else.
“It just takes a lot of your confidence away,” Bethea remembered being behind bars. “It takes a lot of your self-esteem away, and it kills your dreams.”
Bethea is one of several men featured in a docu-series called Don’t Put Down the Clippers.
The film series is about former inmates who learned how to cut hair behind bars and created lives for themselves once they were released.
“To show people how you can do amazing things as a barber even if you were incarcerated,” Chet Bennett, founder and CEO of the Bennett Career Institute, said.
Bennett is one of the men behind the documentary.
His school has been contracted to teach barbering, cosmetology, and service inmates inside of the DC Jail for decades.
“It’s a struggle for them to come home and to try to find employment, but if they have that skill set already under their belt it makes it much easier for them to become a productive citizen in society,” Bennett explained.
The program has helped change the lives of inmates and the people who teach them.
“It wasn’t just for the individual,” Dwayne Jones, Sr., who is a barbering instructor, said. “It was for me because it helped me understand my purpose -- helped me understand why I had the desire, and the thirst, and hunger to help someone along the way.”
Bethea was released more than a decade ago, became a licensed barber and stylist, and has made it a point to give back to the community.
“The feeling that I get back from clients who sit down makes me want to stay with what I do,” Bethea said. “Important. It makes me feel important.”
“It is important for us to understand that everyone is human. It’s important for us to understand that people do make mistakes. It’s important for us to understand that we have to give people second chances and sometimes third and fourth chances,” Bennett said.
Bethea said the opportunity helped him become a better person and create a life outside of prison.
“Don’t give up. The possibility of what could happen is about as great as what has already happened,” Bethea concluded.
The film is set to premiere on Saturday, January 19th at 7 pm in the auditorium of the Bennett Career Institute in Brookland.
If you want to know more about the film or the barbering and cosmetology school, CLICK HERE.