Former escaped inmate Joseph Spring publishes book "Nothing But The Truth"
Part 14 in a series: Spring was the focus of the first episode of What Happened, while he was still at large
Many readers of What Happened are familiar with the story of Joseph Spring, who escaped Hinds County, Mississippi’s Raymond jail in the summer of 2023 and was on the run for 20 days before his dramatic recapture by U.S. marshals following a high-speed chase and car crash in nearby Jackson.
Spring initially caught my attention while he was at large in the vicinity of my own home, and I began researching him because I wanted to know more than was being reported in the local news, in the event of a chance encounter. He was among six inmates who had escaped the facility within a month and has since been the subject of a series of What Happened episodes, beginning with “Joseph Spring, at large.” He is currently an inmate at the state’s Walnut Grove Correctional Facility, itself the subject of a What Happened post.
Spring was one of the reasons I created this site, to enable reporting on backstories pulled from the recesses of the news, in real time. He and I have communicated sporadically since his recapture, during which he expressed an interest in authoring a book about his experiences. I offered some general advice, before and after reading his draft manuscript, but had no role in the book’s publication, nor can I vouch for the veracity of anything it contains.
The finished book, which I have not yet read, is now available as a Kindle e-book on Amazon. It was published on June 4, 2024, titled Nothing But The Truth: The real reasons why guys like me and the other escapees chose to escape from the hell that they call Raymond Jail. Amazon lists as the book’s editors Nicole Williams, Angela Spring and Walter Spring; it runs 97 pages.
Here is a link to the book’s Amazon page, which includes instructions for downloading an app for readers who do not use a Kindle and want to read it on another device. (Nicole Williams posted on social media that a “paperback e-book” will soon also be available.)
Ultimately, Spring chose to focus on his experiences at the Raymond Detention Center and his resulting escape (his broader criminal and correctional history is detailed in the relevant series of What Happened posts).
His account undoubtedly represents a unique voice, speaking from a zone with which few of us are familiar, offering insights from personal experience. Publishing the book is in that sense a major personal milestone.
Inmate books are something of an emerging nonfiction subgenre, and writing this one was no doubt a challenge for Spring, not only because it represented a new type of endeavor but due to the exigencies of incarceration. Writing a book is never easy, and I can only imagine how much more difficult the task would be in prison.
Spring writes in the book’s promotional copy (which appears to have been drafted prior to its publication):
Hey everyone my name is Joseph Spring and I’m currently writing my very first book titled Nothing But The Truth. I started working on book project immediately after my recapture from my 20 day escape from the Raymond Detention Center in Hinds County , Mississippi.
There are multiple reasons for why I’m writing this book and am so dedicated to seeing it through to the end. Most people who see the news on tv and see these breaking news stories of multiple escapes from the Raymond Detention Facility do not really know the real reasons for the escapes.
So by writing this book it is my goal to bring to the light nothing but the truth. The real reasons why guys like me and the other escapees chose to escape from the hell that they call Raymond Jail.
So if y’all are interested in knowing nothing but the truth please buy my book “Nothing But The Truth”, published on Amazon.
Thank you all for your time and your support!
Joseph Wesley Spring aka BEASTMODE.
A more detailed review of the book will be the subject of a future post.
I certainly could not have imagined, last summer, when Joseph Spring represented a potential menace in my world, that a year later I would be posting about the publication of his book. Life sometimes takes unusual turns.
Image: Book cover from Amazon page
I remember the escape in the news, and remember your first blog. I may have a fauwty memory for details, but not those. Is this the same prison where there are two mothers who, without Hinds County Prison officials ever having contacted them, learned that their sons were dead and buried? If so, the use of "officials" by me is decidedly wrong. It should have been imbiceels and I purposefully wrote it like that to mimic the word's use in the Peter Sellers movie "After the Fox" which is far funnier than anything else he has ever done. If what Spring writes meets up with the other accounts of misbehavior at the prison, it seems that the MBI should be called in to investigate the prison staff. All in all, over the last few years, like the white guards who tortured a black inmate over in Rankin County it seems that central Mississippi is regressing back to the terrible conditions of the 1950s and 1960s, and this time with blacks joining in to take the place of whites in that exclusive country club called the Ku Klux Klan. Mississippi had come too far to let these things become business as usual.
He sounds like an interesting person with first hand information about prison life.