About
That’s me - up there - attired in urban guerrilla camouflage. The name I was given is Gregory Koger, so I’m kind of stuck with it, at least for the time being. If you don’t already know me or anything about me, or haven’t read any of my other posts here, I’ve spent a large percentage of my life - and basically all of my adult life - in prison. I went to prison at the age of 17, and was released on December 11, 2006. I’m currently a student at the College of Lake County, and my ultimate educational objective is to obtain a Ph.D. in Computer Science. I’m primarily self-educated, though I did take a few classes in prison when I had the opportunity. I spent the majority of my time in prison in segregation, you can read more about that here if you are interested. And if you’re interested in more of the story of what led me to prison, read this.
- Educational Accomplishments in Prison
All of my real educational accomplishments in prison were done by self-study - basically reading everything I could get my hands on about almost any subject imaginable. But as far as “socially recognized educational accomplishments”, here’s the rundown.
Got my GED within about 3 months of entering the Illinois Department of Corrections in 1996:
I received my GED while I was incarcerated in Joliet Correctional Center - if you’ve seen the movie The Blues Brothers or the tv show Prison Break, then you’ve seen the Joliet prison…
After that I took a couple college classes at the prison, but I never finished them because I wasn’t focused on sitting in a class room when I was looking forward to doing 17 years in prison before I could even possibly be released - plus I went to seg for some shit… And I needed to figure myself and the world out on my own, at my own pace, by myself. So, I didn’t go back to take any more college classes until 1999, when I was in Centralia Correctional Center. I was taking 4 college classes then, basically going to school every night of the week, but I only stayed in Centralia for 4 months, because the IDOC was heavily involved in a process of taking away all of our privileges and imposing a regime of nearly absolute control over every aspect of your life and movement. So I was myself heavily involved in a process of learning more and more and becoming more and more resistant to the policies and practices of control being forced upon me. I did finish 2 of the college classes - Business Management and Spanish, but didn’t get to complete the other 2.
After that I was transferred to Stateville Correctional Center - if you’ve seen the movie Natural Born Killers, the prison scenes in that movie were filmed in Stateville. I did about a year in seg in Stateville, then got out of seg for a few months because I was supposed to goto court for a resentencing. I initially had a sentence of 20 years, and was sentenced under a law (later overturned due to being passed unconstitutionally) called “Truth in Sentencing”, which mandated that I serve at least 85% of my sentence, or 17 years. That law was ruled to have been passed unconstitutionally, so I was then under the regular sentencing scheme in Illinois, generally called “day-for-day good time”. What that means is that for every day you serve in prison, you are given one day good time. This effectively means you end up doing half of the total sentence you received, if you get the good time and don’t lose any more etc. So I would have had to do about 10 years in prison after the 85% was taken off due to being passed unconstitutionally.
Well, another law I was sentenced under was also ruled unconstitutional, and that was why I was supposed to go back for a resentencing in August 2000. My original sentence was 20 years, and guess what a huge reduction I got at my resentencing??? One year! I was resentenced to 19 years. Effectively the judge had me waste my adoptive family’s time and money on a lawyer for him to come back and just resentence me to one year less, which basically was pointless. So, once I got back to Stateville, I was going to retrieve my property, and a guard there was threatening me and trying to steal my property, and I of course violently resisted his attempt at Armed Robbery. This led me to be sent to Pontiac Correctional Center the next day and given an indeterminate period of segregation, and I was also later criminally prosecuted for fighting back against the prison guard who was trying to rob me of my property (and he did rob me of my property, as well as have his accomplices in the Will County prosecutors office prosecute me and have me sentenced to serve an extra 3 years in prison for resisting his crimes). The Will County prosecutor was named Jeff Tomczak, and his father was involved in a huge racketeering operation that funneled money to the prosecutor’s political campaigns etc., which you can read some about here and here and here.
Anyhow, during my period of over 6 years straight in seg in Pontiac, I made a tremendous amount of progress in my self-education, as well as taking a couple courses by mail. For instance, I first took a class in Business Management:
Then I took an Accounting course:
And finally I took a Paralegal course - while I was in the process of personally litigating a Federal Civil Rights lawsuit pertaining to some prison conditions by myself, which the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals finally decided in my favor on the most fundamental points with some excellent help on appeal from Jeffrey L. Oldham (Koger v. Bryan, et al. - United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit #05-1904):
So those are some of the “official” educational accomplishments from my time in prison. But I learned so much more about so many other subjects on my own… Then I had a few articles published in the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center’s newspaper, The Public i - one of which you can read here.
Oh shit, one more thing before I go. When I first got arrested at the age of 17 for the incident I was sent to prison for, I was sent to the Lake County Jail to await trial. The judge there had issued me a $2 million bond, and my trial judge was so gracious and kind as to lower the bond to $1 million. Needless to say, I didn’t get out on bond, and had to remain in the Lake County Jail prior to, during, and after my trial. This is a humorous little document issued by the Lake County Jail when I was put into permanent administrative segregation there 
