From a New York Times story by Patricia Leigh Brown headlined “Upfront About a Life Behind Bars”:

At an age when his peers were getting driver’s licenses and thinking about college, Jose Di Lenola, then 17, was behind bars in one of New York State’s most violent prisons, earning “a master’s degree in Prison Survival,” as he put it. He learned how to wield a metal can lid as a weapon and fashion a protective vest out of magazine covers taped to his torso.