| Why Kindness

The Story of Saint Badass

"My life was the result of my crazy childhood."

That single line launched one of the strangest, most extraordinary correspondences in American prison history — between Roy Tester, a double-murderer serving a life sentence at Arkansas's notorious Tucker Maximum Security Prison, and Doug Carnine, a meditation teacher and lay Buddhist minister three thousand miles away. What began as an exchange between two men became more than 700 letters over seven years. And it didn't stay between two men — three more prisoners at Tucker Max joined in. Together, the five of them built something no one could have predicted: a profound spiritual partnership that changed all of their lives.

Saint Badass: Personal Transcendence in Tucker Max Hell

This is their story, told in their own words — five men rediscovering their humanity in one of the most inhuman places on Earth.

The Synopsis

Saint Badass is a memoir about bringing heaven down to hell.

Drawing on years of letters, Doug Carnine tells the story of his partnership with three murderers and an alleged rapist — men housed together at the same notorious Arkansas maximum-security prison featured in the Robert Redford film Brubaker — and how the Buddhist practices of mindfulness and kindness helped transform their lives from the inside out.

In their letters — to Carnine, and sometimes to one another — the prisoners lay bare unrelentingly abusive childhoods, lives of violence and crime, and a slow, hard-won submission to prison life. Then something shifts: a growing commitment to meditation, to kindness, to each other.

A suspenseful, moving drama unfolds as these men forge an unlikely partnership and catch glimpses of a freedom no cell can touch. Each one faces new crises behind bars — disabling illness, a brain tumor, a prison gang attack, family betrayal, medical abuse, harsh punishment for the mildest of offenses. And each, through mindfulness and the blessings of kindness, finds his own way through.

The brutality of prison and the horror of these men's upbringings stand in stark, almost impossible contrast to what grows between them instead: unrelenting acts of kindness, and a deepening concern for one another's well-being. This is a story that challenges everything we assume about the people society throws away — and makes the case, letter by letter, that change is possible. It's the story of the prisoners' transformation. It's also the story of the author's own, as he shares his personal struggles and learns as much from the courage of his prison friends as they ever learned from him.

Doug still supports three of the four co-authors today, as they continue to practice — and teach — mindful kindness from inside a system that keeps abusing them. They persevere anyway.

The fourth, Cody, died in prison.

The Trail Cody Never Walked — and Never Left

Doug and his wife Linda traveled to Arkansas to visit Roy. But prison security rules meant they were never allowed to see the other three co-authors in person — bringing multiple violent offenders together, even for a visit, was considered too great a risk. So Doug never once met Cody face to face.

And yet Cody listed Doug as his next of kin.

What connected them instead was a trail — the one that runs from Doug and Linda's cabin along the McKenzie River. Doug would describe it to Cody in letters: the bend in the water, the trees, the quiet. It brought Cody joy. In his mind, he'd walk it alongside Doug, mile after mile, from a cell he'd never leave.

When Cody's ashes arrived, Doug and Linda carried them to that same trail and scattered them along the McKenzie River — the path Cody had walked so many times, only ever in his imagination, until he finally became part of it.

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