Joey Ramos: From Trouble to Triumph in the Shadows of Prison

A Stabbing Three Weeks In

When Joey Ramos got to Leavenworth, I’d already heard about him from the Texas homeboys. They called him Romo, and everybody knew he’d been through the Texas Department of Corrections before landing in federal prison. What I didn’t know on my first day was how much that experience had shaped him into the kind of guy who’d put his arm around a scared new inmate and say, “You don’t look like you’ve been here before, so you’re going to need some help.”

Romo’s path to federal prison started with an EPA violation for improper asbestos removal. A Michigan judge gave him two years probation and a fine. That should have been the end of it. But life had other plans. “It wasn’t until some events happened in Texas with my wife that changed everything,” Romo told me. “And my actual, how I ended up in Leavenworth was my violation.” The feds gave him five years for violating probation on what started as a county-level case.

Before any of that, though, there was the young Joey Ramos in Bay City, Michigan. Boxing kept him out of trouble when nothing else would. “Boxing honestly kept me out of a lot of trouble,” he said. “I should have went to prison way long time ago. You know what I mean? Before I did.” His coach, Gary Richards, became a father figure who provided structure when everything else in his life felt chaotic.

Learning the Rules at TDC

The Texas Department of Corrections taught Romo lessons that would serve him in federal prison later. But those lessons came hard and fast. “My first three weeks I got stabbed going to the cell hall,” he told me. “Yeah. And by, with the toothbrush, I had it sticking out of my arm and it was tough. It was very tough.”

That stabbing wasn’t random violence. It was education. In Texas state prison, you learn quickly that showing weakness gets you cornered. “You have to learn how to survive. It’s like being in a cage. You know what I mean? You won’t bite back. You’re going to get bit. You’re going to be stuck in the corner.”

By the time he got to Leavenworth, Romo understood the unwritten rules that keep you alive in federal prison. The wardens think they run the place, but it’s the inmates who control what happens in the yard. “They say the prison system is controlled by the warden and the corrections officers that’s wrong. The prisons are controlled by the actual inmates, the convicts.”

Finding Purpose Behind the Walls

At Leavenworth, Romo connected with guys like Clark, another inmate who got him thinking about more than just survival. Together, they worked with the Archbishop to set up a Catholic program that gave inmates something permanent. “It was something they could take with them that nobody could take away because in prison, whether it’s federal or state, you can lose everything,” Romo explained. “They can take away your freedom. They can take away your name. Whatever it is, but they can’t take that away.”

The program helped dozens of guys get their first communion and confirmation. For Romo, it wasn’t just about organizing events. It was about recognizing that even in the darkest place, you could still reach for something better.

When we were in the RDAP program together, Romo was one of the leaders finishing up his nine months. He should have gotten a year off his sentence, but they only gave him nine months. The disappointment could have broken him, but something else happened instead. He was doing a Marian concentration retreat when he opened the letter with his release date. “My concentration date was December 8th. And my date of being released was December 8th.” The coincidence felt like more than luck.

The Boots and the Bottle

After his release in December 2014, Romo did something that might sound strange to people who’ve never been locked up. He kept wearing his prison boots. “The whole time my first six months out of Level World, I used to wear my prison boots,” he said. “Because I had to remember where I came from. When I stopped wearing them, I stopped remembering where I came from.”

Nine months out, he stopped wearing the boots. He was working for the union in Detroit, had a fiancé who loved him, and seemed to be building something real. But old patterns crept back in. After a fight with his fiancé, he grabbed a bottle and started drinking. “It took me, I think, three minutes and 36 seconds to drink that whole fifth.” As he drank, his rosary from the Bishop fell off his neck. He picked it up, put it on the table, and kept drinking.

The next morning, he woke up in Macomb County jail. For someone who’d made it out of federal prison, waking up in jail again is the nightmare scenario. “For the first time in my life, I was truly scared,” Romo said. His attorney wanted him to fight the domestic violence case, but Romo knew better. His fiancé was “one of the rabbits,” as he called innocent people. If she said he did something wrong, he did something wrong.

Back to Bloody Beaumont

The state judge gave him time served, but the federal system wasn’t done with him. The same judge who’d originally given him probation told him: “Mr. Ramos, you can’t do probation. You’re not capable of doing probation. Therefore I’m sending you back for no less than two and a half years.” The destination was Beaumont, Texas, a maximum-security facility known in the prison world as “Bloody Beaumont.”

For most inmates, Beaumont would be a death sentence. For Romo, it was almost a homecoming. “Those were my homeboys,” he said. “She was sending me somewhere where I know it sounds. Oh, Beaumont. Bloody Beaumont. That’s me.” The Texas homeboys were waiting for him with a cook-up meal and open arms.

Beaumont tested every survival skill he’d learned. “One of the hardest things about doing time wasn’t being forgotten,” he reflected. “The hardest thing about doing time was being able to look at man and knowing you could take his life. You have to walk with that for the rest of your life.”

Finding Recovery

When Romo got out the second time in late 2017, everything had changed. His kids had grown up without him. PTSD was real and constant. He started drinking and using drugs again, but this time there was no federal probation officer to stop him.

The woman he was seeing took him to a grotto, then to a rehab facility in Sellersburg, Indiana. There, he started finding himself again. “If it wasn’t for this place right here, I won’t be sitting in front of you today bro,” he said. “It wasn’t for that place.”

Today, Romo works for the union and coaches boxing, passing on the same discipline that kept him out of trouble as a kid. He’s learned the difference between heroes and poets, as he puts it. “Every morning I say either I’m going to read about it or talk about it.” The choice is simple: be the hero of your own story, or just talk about being one.