Biography
Jim Perkins was a teacher and father living in the Jonah House resistance community in Baltimore at the time of Pershing Plowshares.
Pershing Plowshares: custody episodes distinguished
The original May 1984 newsletter dates the action and initial detention to April 22, 1984 and reports continued detention while the eight refused bond. The August issue establishes sentencing on July 26, 1984. However, Jim Perkins subsequently described a period of freedom before the trial ended. The initial detention and later sentenced imprisonment are therefore recorded separately; the exact intervening release and later remand dates remain unresolved. The July 26 sentencing date is not silently treated as a new prison-admission date, and no arrest-to-final-release continuous total is inferred.
The sentence was three years for depredation and five years probation for conspiracy, with restitution. Christin Schmidt expressly corrected the earlier newsletter account of an extra suspended five-year term, and Perkins independently describes the same sentence.
Sources: Nuclear Resister 25, May 9, 1984, pages 1 and 3; issue 26, August 2, 1984, page 1; issue 27, December 3, 1984, page 10, Schmidt correction; Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Spring 1986, Perkins firsthand account pages 4-5.
The Buddhist Peace Fellowship interview conducted in February 1986 explicitly dates his actual release from Danbury to December 23, 1985. This supersedes the December 24 forecast in the December newsletter. His account gives eighteen months served, not a continuous elapsed interval from April 1984. No exact day count is manufactured from the approximate month total. The same publication captions a photograph of Perkins with his daughters; the PDF embeds the entire scanned page rather than a separate original portrait, so the image remains a documented acquisition lead. Source: BPF Spring 1986, page 6 interview and page 4 photograph.
Release day uncertainty preserved
The January 20, 1986 Nuclear Resister reports actual parole to the Insight Meditation Society on December 24, 1985, not merely a forecast. The later BPF interview dates release from Danbury to December 23. These may distinguish departure and parole placement, but that distinction is not explicit. This supersedes the preceding exact-day choice: December 1985 is recorded at month precision with December 23-24 bounds. The stored December 1 is a precision placeholder, not an asserted release day. Initial detention and later imprisonment remain separate.
Sources: Nuclear Resister 37, January 20, 1986, page 6; BPF Spring 1986 interview, page 6.
Official federal release record: December 24, 1985
The Federal Bureau of Prisons locator, checked October 20, 2026, identifies JAMES LYMAN PERKINS, register 03825-018, FCI Danbury, and records actual release December 24, 1985. The Pershing Plowshares appellate opinion identifies the defendant by the same full name. This official actual-release record corroborates the December 24 parole report and supersedes the preceding month-only structured date and December 23-24 bounds. The differing December 23 interview account is preserved above as a source discrepancy; an earlier physical departure is not established by this database lookup. The date records federal release, not termination of probation. Initial bail discharge and later prison admission remain unknown, so no continuous total is calculated.
Contemporary 1983–1984 custody evidence
The Update Files explicitly reports Jim Perkins actually served five days in jail in December 1983 for nonpayment of a Pentagon-protest fine. The exact individual intake and discharge days are not supplied, and no five-day span is back-calculated. This completed short stay is separate from the later 1984 Pershing Plowshares detention and sentence already stored.
The Nuclear Resister No. 23, February 12, 1984, original PDF 6 / printed 5.
The Spring/Summer 1986 Write Through the Walls directory individually lists Jim Perkins under historical prisoner number 03825-018, with correspondence directed to Pembroke Station, Danbury, Connecticut. The original name, individual number and political-prisoner group context match this existing profile. This is dated historical correspondence information, not a present mailing instruction or an independently established admission, transfer, release or completed custody duration.
