Tracy Carlisle had escaped a crime scene by crashing through a picture window. His own blood now left a trail from an address where two people already lay wounded.
Carlisle went to the west side Detroit home of a jeweler to settle a $3,200 score, but he never even fired his pistol. Instead only the home’s occupants became involved in the 2012 shooting that followed panic and chaos in morning darkness.
Carlisle’s attempt to make a point had failed miserably; now he fled the shit show, in fear of its consequences. Today, near the one-year anniversary of his release from prison, he says he’s committed to rebuilding his life and creating opportunities for others who struggle due to a criminal background, poverty, and disadvantages similar to those he experienced.
“I want to be able to show that people coming from prison can change,” says Carlisle, 34. “We just need another shot at the title.”
Carlisle’s second “shot” has been exceptionally challenging since he was paroled from the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) last summer after serving 12 years for the shooting. At a time when immigrants and transgender men and women command daily attention in national public debate, he represents a largely forgotten segment of the community: So-called returning citizens, ex-offenders who’ve been released from prison, face a plight that draws a mixture of empathy, scorn, and apathy when under the gaze of larger society. But, as Carlisle’s life story illustrates, a large number of returning citizens worked to overcome tremendous obstacles before they ever saw the inside of a cell.
“Prison lives matter, too,” he says. “There are people who’ve been there 20 years, 30 years, and they don’t have any family when they come home.”
In retrospect, Carlisle says he didn’t even have much of a family before he was sent to prison.
Playing with fire
One of 13 children, Carlisle was placed into Michigan’s foster care system at age 5. He and his siblings lived with alcoholic parents in a Southwest Detroit neighborhood at Michigan Avenue and 33rd Street. In a home where tragedy seemed to lurk just around the corner, he discovered a cigarette lighter while his parents were in a drunken sleep. He was enticed by loose string dangling from some bedding.
“I thought it was a spider,” Carlisle recalls. “I said, ‘It got away from me,’ but really, it was the flame that got away from me.”
Terrified after a careless flick of the lighter, the child acted right away, but had trouble rousing his mom and dad.
“By the time they woke up, because they were so intoxicated they were sleeping heavy, the whole bed was in flames,” Carlisle says.
The blaze spread through the house. His parents got Carlisle and his siblings out safely, but it was the second case of neglect that had been reported, so Children’s Protective Services took the kids into custody. The aftermath of the incident left Carlisle not only homeless, but bewildered and dismayed.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” he says. “Those emotions, I still deal with to this day, because it separated me from my brothers.”
Particularly fond of Charles and Chris, who were both older, Carlisle eventually landed in the same foster home as Chris. Charles’s foster parent was a relative of his siblings’ guardian, so the three brothers maintained contact with one another for about seven years.
“They most often blamed me for being the reason we were taken away from our parents,” Carlisle says, ruefully.
New beginnings
At age 7 he began attending school for the first time, having never been enrolled. Wilkins Elementary, on Detroit’s east side, simultaneously classified him as a kindergartner and first-grader, but he managed to get on track, earning good grades, playing sports, and adjusting to his new life and neighborhood.
By about age 11 they hadn’t been legally adopted, so he, Charles, and Chris were sent to a residential facility for boys. Carlisle admits that he and his brothers missed out on opportunities to get new parents when they told social workers they didn’t like the adults who’d been interested.
“We were under the impression that we could go back home,” he says.
The siblings had been attending court-approved visits with their biological mom and dad, but were eventually told their parents didn’t fulfill the obligations to regain custody. The brothers were later split up after Charles was adopted. Virginia, a foster mom who’d taken both Carlisle and Chris into her west side Detroit home, adopted only Carlisle.
It might have been a happy ending — except that he says Virginia misused funds the State of Michigan designated for her adopted teenager’s care.
“I had to pay for my own food,” recalls Carlisle. “I had to steal money to buy clothes.”
Because Virginia offered no more than “a roof over my head,” he adds, “I ended up leaving and turning to the streets.”
Ironically, the streets led Carlisle to his guardian angel: Now in his 20s, Jeremy, a former foster care youth from Indiana, was new to the neighborhood.
“He said, ‘I know what you’re going through. I want to help you out,’” Carlisle remembers.
Education was high on Jeremy’s agenda, so he’d give Carlisle bus fare to Northwestern High School. Carlisle eventually moved in with Jeremy and his family. Although Jeremy sold drugs and often left town to make runs, he forbade his informally adopted younger sibling from the street hustle.
“I’d ask,” says Carlisle, “and he’d say, ‘Naw, we got something better for you. Just finish school.’”
When Jeremy returned from one of his trips, to be home for his son’s birthday, he was killed.
“I don’t think I cried for nobody in my life, when it comes to death,” says Carlisle, “but I cried when Jeremy died.”
“I strongly felt that I owed him.”
So he continued supporting Jeremy’s girlfriend and helping her raise Jeremy’s son, but now Carlisle also sold weed, breaking Jeremy’s rule.
“I met some guys who were a lot heavier in the game than I was,” he recalls.
At just 5-feet-5 and 135 pounds, Carlisle says he was both “the smallest and the youngest” of his new peer group, so he felt he “had a point to prove.”
“I was in the streets doing all types of shit,” he adds. “Everything you heard about Tracy, Tracy was making a name for himself.”
But when he’d hustled enough money to flash a little success, one simple transaction would lead to his downfall.
‘This guy’s shooting everybody!’
He wanted a “Jesus face.” It was the kind of gold pendant Jeremy had worn. But when Carlisle shelled out $3,200 to the same jeweler his friends used, to buy a customized emblem, he says the man went ghost.
“I’m telling y’all he took my money,” Carlisle remembers complaining.
Making matters worse, his friends were skeptical, since they didn’t know he and the jeweler had ever struck a deal.
Carlisle learned that the man lived not far from him, so he told the jeweler he’d be paying him a visit. About 4 a.m. or 5 a.m., he says, he approached the jeweler’s house, reached through the security gate, tried turning the door handle — and heard gunfire.
The jeweler had been ready and waiting.
A woman, the jeweler’s wife, soon appeared, alarmed by the commotion. In a panic, the man shot her accidentally.
Carlisle ducked near the door that he’d managed to enter, but then he saw a teenager. When Carlisle showed his pistol the young man ran, but he, too, was shot by the jeweler.
“I said, ‘This guy’s shooting everybody! Shit!’” Carlisle recalls.
Finding that a deadbolt door had automatically locked behind him, he burst through the window. Carlisle recalls “police, helicopters, news cameras” descending on the neighborhood, along with a tracking canine. Like a “needle in a hay stack,” he says, he was later located at a house where he’d hunkered down and cleaned himself up. At 21 he was arrested and eventually convicted of home invasion, felony firearm, and assault with intent to do great bodily harm, despite the fact that he’d never even aimed his weapon at anyone. Contrary to media reports at the time, Carlisle says the teenager, who died from his injury, was not an accomplice in the break-in, but a house guest.
Carlisle says he never planned bodily harm against anyone. He only meant to intimidate a man who’d cheated him.
“All I wanted was some jewelry,” he adds.
He never got to hang the “Jesus face” from his neck.
Detroit. Second chance?
Prison would become a training ground for Carlisle’s calling. Never a “class clown” in school, he says he used his natural smarts to research his case, spending hours in the library and winning some appeals decisions, but eventually serving 12 years.
He began advising other inmates concerning their cases, and he earned a paralegal degree, along with getting certified in optometry. While Carlisle was incarcerated he heard from Virginia, his former foster mom. He’d attempted to go back to her house before the shooting, but she said no. Now she became a newfound source of encouragement, writing him regularly and offering well wishes every January on his birthday.
Then Carlisle abruptly stopped hearing from Virginia. She’d died in 2022, his strongest lifeline to the outside world dying with her, he says.
With a release date of May 2024 gradually approaching, Carlisle was offered the opportunity to participate in a program that would provide housing, transportation, and basic necessities until he got on his feet, but he says there was a catch: He’d have to remain in MDOC custody for 90 more days until a spot in the program became available. The alternative was being discharged at the earliest date, then returning to society with a criminal record and barely $10 from a prison food service job he’d worked, at 17 cents an hour.
“I said, ‘I got plans. I just don’t have a support system,’” Carlisle remembers.
He accepted the offer and voluntarily remained in prison until last August.
But like so many other things he’d experienced in three decades of living, Carlisle says the offer didn’t match the outcome. His first snag occurred almost immediately after he arrived at Detroit Second Chance transitional housing, where he was presented with a contract stating that he was responsible for securing his own necessities. No resources for clothing, food, or other items Carlisle says he’d been promised would be provided.
“If you don’t sign it you can’t stay here,” Carlisle says he was told. “We have to find someplace else for you to stay.”
His residence at Detroit Second Chance would be short-lived. Carlisle continued the prisoner advocacy work he’d begun while still locked up, and says he even helped Detroit Second Chance develop a mission statement, but when he invited to the residence a legal organization that supports returning citizens, he was told the meeting wouldn’t be allowed. Carlisle was evicted from the program without explanation, he says, though he suspects it was retaliation for complaining about subpar conditions.
Darryl Eason, who heads Detroit Second Chance, says he didn’t directly interact with Carlisle, but the program supports almost 300 men annually through housing, and offers “gratuitous” assistance finding employment, securing Bridge Cards for food, and other services.
“The complaints we get are about rules,” says Eason.
For example, curfew is often an issue, and residents aren’t always happy to learn that they can’t bring alcohol or cigarettes to the premises.
“We get guys saying, ‘I’m not in prison anymore. I should be able to bring in what I want,’” adds Eason.
An attorney himself, Eason says he “would have been happy to see him get some help,” if he’d known about Carlisle’s scheduled meeting with the legal advocacy group. Carlisle’s claims of unclean and inoperable toilets and other issues are “simply not true,” Eason says.
“I just remember him being demanding,” adds Eason, saying, “I wish him the best.”
While Carlisle says the experience left him feeling “betrayed,” and maintains that he only made demands of Detroit Second Chance staff when it was necessary, his eviction was the first of several setbacks.
Shaya Baum, whose organization, Firefly Advocates, offered Carlisle support upon his release, says prison recidivism is partly caused by failings of the system itself, regarding returning citizens. A lack of proper “safety nets” and disinvestment of state resources into preparing ex-offenders to succeed often leaves them few options besides returning to criminal behavior, Baum says. Even those who don’t have a loved one or friend in need of post-prison housing or employment should recognize the impact of returning citizens, he adds: “Ninety-eight percent of people will be getting out of prison. It might even be higher than 98 percent.”
Long-time advocate Joseph Williams knows the plight from both personal and professional experience. An ex-felon, he has devoted decades to supporting returning citizens through his former organization, Transition of Prisoners, and through initiatives like the ongoing Detroit Enhances Reentry Project.
“The number of African Americans impacted by incarceration is disproportionately high, compared to other races,” says Williams. “When it comes to extreme sentences, we are even impacted at a greater level. Because of mass incarceration there is virtually no African American family that is untouched.”
Williams, an author and president of the Nehemiah Consortium, also serves as a senior consultant with American Institutes for Research, examining “juvenile lifers,” minors convicted as adults, and who’ve spent more than 20 years in prison.
“They need special support, upon release from such extreme sentences,” he says. “Our community is enriched when everyone has an opportunity to succeed.”
Carlisle says he has mainly scraped by on visiting food pantries while shuffling from one poorly maintained place of residence to another, even boarding at one home in frigid January with no heat. He received occasional help from two initiatives that support returning citizens, Flip the Script and the Here to Help Foundation, along with aid from churches. There was also thoughtfulness from one of Carlisle’s previous social workers, who brought him Kentucky Fried Chicken last Christmas.
“I almost cried,” Carlisle says.
In the winter of 2025 he found work packaging hummus at a Ferndale company, where he has put in lots of hours on the 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. shift. But all the stress of struggling in so many areas landed him in the hospital more than once, triggering conditions like high blood pressure. Still, he’s not throwing pity parties, he says, only asking for fair opportunities.
A narrow path
For the entire year that he has been a free man, Carlisle has continued advocating not only for himself, but for other returning citizens. From resumes to legal referrals, he says he uses his skills and shares the resources he discovers, to help just about anyone he can. So he was not only shocked, but disappointed in himself, when he woke up in yet another rooming facility, on a spring morning, to the sight of a man who’d arrived days earlier, hanging by his neck in the basement.
He’d committed suicide.
“That means I took a break,” he says. “I couldn’t afford to take a break. The mission is that important.”
He adds, “If I had been able to talk to that guy and ask, ‘How can we help?’ and ‘What can we do for you?’ I don’t think he would have done it.”
Carlisle doesn’t miss the irony that, while posing questions as if he runs a social service agency, he has had his own major struggles. Through the No Excuses Initiative, a non-profit blueprint he started with Blake Lindsey, who he met in a transitional house, and their partner Clinton Cheeks, his goal is to cultivate equal access to educational and professional resources in underserved neighborhoods.
“He wants to help people,” says Lindsey, No Excuses Initiative CEO. “When he was in prison that’s what he did: law cases to help people get out, and at fair ‘prices.’”
Describing Carlisle as “genuine,” Lindsey, who served almost 15 years in the MDOC for armed robbery and other offenses, says their background as ex-offenders uniquely qualifies them for the outreach work they’ve begun, holding workshops and sharing information in the community.
“We both take full accountability for our actions,” adds Lindsey. “Coming from the neighborhoods we did, and from our background, we made dumb decisions, but you can see the positive actions that we’re doing now. You see us working in the community, you see us working and being honest at our jobs. Give us the opportunity to make sure there aren’t any more Blakes or Tracys who make the same mistakes we made.”
Noting, “Our president has 36 felonies,” Lindsey says hypocrisy helps divide communities about the question of support for returning citizens.
Carlisle adds that others lack empathy because they see prison through a skewed lens, saying that inmates get three meals a day and free shelter, at taxpayer expense.
“But what about the abuses and inhumane treatment they receive?” Carlisle asks.
Carlisle recently registered a second organization, Gotcha-back, Inc., which will have a similar goal to the No Excuses Initiative’s, to uplift neighborhoods and reduce violence. Licensed to write corrective lens prescriptions, Carlisle also plans to open an optometry lab.
Melissa Eberling, an advocate with the Warrior Within Us podcast, says Carlisle has already made great strides since “absolutely heartbreaking” disappointments following his release.
“Tracy’s so passionate and he’s so right in everything he’s coming forward about, just his energy to want to be better,” says Eberling.
“I am blown away by his ability to advocate for himself,” she says, “and his desire to do so.”
PTSD suffered by many returning citizens is comparable to that of ex-combat soldiers, but instead of receiving aid, the returning citizens are exploited by a “multimillion-dollar prison industrial complex” after they re-offend, Eberling says.
Carlisle’s former parole agent, Officer Alex Smith, has also been impressed by his progress.
“In Tracy Carlisle I see a lot of talent. I see a lot of potential,” says Smith. “But the biggest challenge that he has is channeling the anger, the resentment.”
Smith, whose professional background includes prison work and social services, says he relates to Carlisle’s experiences, and could have easily wound up sitting “on the other side” of a parole officer’s desk.
“I tell guys I did dumb stuff,” Smith says. “I carried guns into the night club.”
He adds, “I tell them, ‘Please don’t try to get it all back in one day.’ If you were ‘the man’ on the street, the game is not the same. The drug game is not the same, the gun game is not the same. Whatever you’re into, the game has changed.
“Get a job. Be there for your kids, because they need you. Take it day by day. That applies to us, just as human beings, because we don’t always get it right all the time.”
With the arrival of his one-year anniversary as a free man, Carlisle says the clouds over his personal path are just starting to lift. Following a terrible scare in May — he describes it as a misunderstanding with the parole office about his fifth change of address — that he thought would send him back to prison, he has a stable, east side Detroit home that he’s helping to renovate. It’s quite a trek to work in Ferndale, but he still has his job, and he’s taking steps to become a foster dad this year.
He remains eager to encourage fellow returning citizens.
“What I want a person to see is I’m in the same situation you’re in. If I can do it, you can do it, too,” Carlisle says. “In fact, you don’t have to do it alone. I’m willing to help carry some of your weight. But when I do that, you can’t be bullshitting, because I’m not going to be bullshitting with you.”
He adds, “I’m long-winded [in endurance]. I just did 12 years in prison. I’ll give them the last I have in my pocket. If they fail, I’ll help them again.
“But if they jack it off, ain’t no repeats.”
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This article appears in Aug 20 – Sep 2, 2025.