In a mix of harmonies, solos and rap, three Virginia Beach jail inmates performed for an audience of deputies, city officials and media in the city jail Aug. 15.
“Get your surfboard, something to work towards, I was raised different,” Jonathan Jones and Marc Austin rapped.
“I was raised different,” Zykiah Barnes sang in a refrain.
“I mentioned a switch of my ways, listen, I’m kicking back through fiction. We can flip the stats.”
The group calls themselves BDO — short for Beat da Odds — and the verses are from their original song “Not a Number.” It’s part of a rehabilitation program conceived by Sheriff Rocky Holcomb.
“There's so much talent incarcerated in here,” Holcomb said.
Studies show access to education, including arts and culture programs, in prisons and jails reduce a person’s likelihood to reoffend. It also leads to benefits after incarceration, like increased income, lower unemployment, greater political engagement and improved health outcomes.
“Ninety percent of these prisoners will be re-entering society and coming back to our neighborhoods,” Holcomb said. “We want to make sure we give them some skills and resources so that they have a soft landing when they get back.”
Other rehabilitation initiatives led by Holcomb's office include alternative sentencing programs and supportive housing.
BDO was something of a pilot program, a first-time experiment for many at the jail. Sgt. Brandi Parris reached out to Brandon “Shaggy” Stokes, a morning radio host at Z104, to head up the program.
Stokes enlisted music producers to help him narrow down a group of singers from the field of hopefuls and visited the jail a couple times a week for the past few months to help Jones, Barnes and Austin rehearse. The group practiced together in a jail cell or the gym — which was converted into a concert hall for the performance.
Stokes said he hopes to do a similar program for women in jail and maybe expand the ensemble to include more inmates.
Jones, 42, led the trio and animated each song with bold expression and movement. He’s been in jail since February, charged with violating parole. He had a previous charge of wounding without malicious intent from 2021.
Barnes, the youngest of the group at 24, sang with a clear tenor voice. He was committed in July for violating his probation; he was charged in 2022 with the unlawful purchase and transportation of a firearm.
Austin, 38, held eye contact with audience members as he rapped. He is being held on 12 felony and 10 misdemeanor charges — many of them drug-related charges — as well as simple assault on a family member and stabbing or wounding with malicious intent.
Along with original songs, the group performed two covers: the gospel song “My Life is in Your Hands” and country artist Sam Hunt’s “Locked Up.”
As BDO performed "Locked Up," Public Information Officer Toni Guagenti mouthed along: “The night I got locked up, everything went wrong. The night I got messed up, should’ve just stayed home.”
“I’ve heard this a lot,” she said. “It’s hard not to sing along.”
The group was also joined by Kenyatta Emmanuel, a singer-songwriter who wrote and performed music while he was incarcerated for 24 years in New York. On the day of his release in 2019, he sang before a crowd at Carnegie Hall.
Stokes recorded and aired the performance on Z104.
“We’re here today just to be able to give the public a chance to see that, yeah, we made some bad decisions and we made some bad choices, but we’re not going to be defined by the decision we made,” Jones said, addressing the crowd.
“In fact, we’ll use those to build upon to be better in the future.”
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