Questions and Activities: Answer as you deem appropriate
Although I completed my prison sentence in August 2013, I have built a career sharing lessons I learned while I served a 45-year prison term. Those lessons helped me to climb through adversity, and they helped me convert adversaries into advocates. For that reason, I’ll continue living a values-based, goal-oriented life—just as I did while serving my sentence.
To reach my highest potential, I know that I must:
Those are the first steps of our primary course:
I understand that every decision comes with an opportunity cost. If we don’t take small, incremental steps each day, we will not succeed. For example, I’m writing this entry on July 1, 2023. In one year, I anticipate that we will see many political ads. The Republicans and the Democrats will argue over the direction that they want to take our country. One issue concerns me: Criminal Justice Reform.
Some politicians, like Florida’s Governor DeSantis, oppose prison reform. He states that, if elected President, he would work to repeal the First Step Act. I must take small steps today so that I will be in a better position to advocate for the expansion of the First Step Act, not the opposition.
By bringing more courses into jails and prisons across America, and building a platform that will allow thousands of people to memorialize their release plans, I believe that we can build a powerful voice. We can help more Americans understand why we need to define best possible outcomes of our nation’s criminal justice system, and we must incentivize excellence.
I am advocating for:
To build a powerful, influential website, I must hold myself accountable. I must invite others to follow along with our work. And I must strive to teach more people in prison how to prepare for success upon release. That requires daily progress. Visit our website regularly to see how we grow.
I didn’t know how long the ordeal would last. Authorities arrested me on August 11, 1987. I was 23. At first, I only thought about how much I wanted to get out. The severity of the charges against me, however, meant that I would have to remain in confinement until the adjudication of my case. Since the penalty would expose me to decades in prison, officers at the detention center locked me in solitary confinement.
After about a year, the jury convicted me.
While I awaited sentencing, an officer passed me a book that helped change how I think. Instead of focusing on what the system did to me, I learned to reflect on all the wrong decisions that brought me to prison. That exercise of introspection helped me to accept that, just as decisions brought me to prison, the decisions I made while serving my sentence would influence what kind of life I would lead in the future.
I wanted to make amends with society. I had made a series of catastrophic decisions, including:
I had to make better decisions. Good lessons helped me realize that I should start with a plan. To make a plan, I would need to define success. When I finished serving my sentence, I had to think about what kind of life I wanted to lead.
I remember defining success as putting on a suit and tie and feeling as if I could walk into any room and no one would know that I served a day in prison. That mindset made all the difference. It helped me engineer the plan that would lead me through decades of imprisonment:
Many opportunities opened when I concluded my prison term in August of 2013. If I had not learned how to create an action-oriented release plan, my adjustment to society after a quarter-century confinement would have been much more challenging.
Although I concluded my obligation to the Bureau of Prisons in August 2013, I remember the methodical adjustment strategy that carried me through. This book shows how every minute of the day counts.
More than ten years have passed since I walked out of prison, but I still use the same principled approach to make it through each day.
For example, today is July 1, 2023, and I’m working to develop our new platform:
A podcast inspired me to build this platform to help as many justice-impacted people as possible. I want them to see that if they memorialize the release plans that they created, they will be in a better position to prepare for success upon release. By memorializing my release plan, I opened many opportunities that allowed me to overcome the challenges that make life so difficult for other people who served lengthy sentences in prison.
A mantra of our business is that we never ask anyone to do anything we’re not doing. Therefore, I’m responding to all the questions in our course.
Those questions would have guided my journey at the start of my term. When authorities arrested me and placed me in the detention center’s solitary confinement section, I only wanted to get out of prison. I didn’t yet know how to build a plan.
Without a plan, I put all my faith in my attorney, who told me he could prevail through trial—even though I knew I was guilty of the crimes charged against me.
My early decisions put me in a terrible place. I wanted to do better, but I needed direction on how to move forward with my life.
At the start of my journey through the system, I should have been introspecting. Those reflections would have helped me appreciate the severity of problems I created. The War on Drugs had just begun, and I faced life in prison.
Later, after a jury convicted me, I began to see the world differently. An officer brought me a book about Socrates. From that story, I learned to reflect on all the past decisions of my life. I began to accept that I faced decades in prison for selling cocaine, but my real problems started much earlier.
My problems began I didn’t have a life plan. Once a jury convicted me and an officer started bringing books that could change how I thought, I could put a plan together to help me get through prison. Regardless of where authorities placed me, I wanted to commit to my plan.
At the start of my prison journey, I thought about the people I wanted to interact with upon release. I felt ashamed that I had made decisions that brought me into the federal prison system with a 45-year sentence. I wanted to do better.
Many people serving time alongside me advised me to forget about the world outside and focus on my life in prison. But I hated being in prison. I wanted a better life and to associate with people who would not judge me for my crimes alone. Instead, I wanted them to consider how I responded to the punishment a judge imposed.
At the start of my prison term, I created a release plan. That release plan would help me reconcile with society. Although I didn’t know what I would become in the months, years, and decades ahead, I knew that I wanted to build relationships with influential, law-abiding citizens when I walked out of prison.
The release plan I put in place would require that I spend all my time focusing on three prongs:
At the age of 20, I made a regrettable decision to sell cocaine. Authorities arrested me when I was 23. A jury convicted me, and a judge sentenced me to serve 45 years in prison. Early in my sentence, I made a commitment to reconcile with society and work toward building credentials that would empower me to live as a law-abiding, contributing citizen.
I created a detailed release plan that carried me through 9,500 days in prison. That release plan would allow me to return to society strong, with my dignity intact and opportunities to prosper. I’ve built a career around that journey, advocating for reforms that I believed would improve outcomes for all justice-impacted people. The biography, and the validating links below, show that I never ask anyone to do anything that I did not do to work toward the best possible outcome.
None of us can change the past, but we can all work to make amends and create a better future. Justice-impacted people should engineer an effective release plan, use that plan to build a better future, and memorialize the measurable, incremental progress they make.
All the courses I create provide guidance on how to prepare for success upon release:
I used those seven steps above to prepare for success upon release from prison. I strive to teach others how to navigate the crisis of a criminal conviction and work toward building lives of meaning, contribution, and relevance.
Since the crime of leading an enterprise that sold cocaine carried a potentially lengthy sentence, administrators in the detention center locked me in solitary confinement. In the beginning, all I wanted was to get out of prison. Misguided, I proceeded through a trial despite being guilty of the crime.
The jury convicted me of all counts.
Following the conviction, a kind officer in the detention center brought me books. Those biographies introduced me to the transformative stories of Frederick Douglass, Nelson Mandela, Socrates, and Viktor Frankl. Inspired by these figures, I crafted a three-pronged release plan to guide me through prison. I would focus on the following:
Rather than allow the sentence or prison walls to define me, I used all my time inside to prepare for success upon release.
Through that commitment, I earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree during my imprisonment. Then I authored books. Those books helped me to build a solid and influential support network. I even married the love of my life during my 16th year of confinement, and we’ve built a life together.
Upon my release, San Francisco State University hired me to work as an adjunct professor. I created a unique course, “The Architecture of Incarceration,” to foster a deeper understanding of prison systems and how we could improve them by incentivizing excellence among prisoners. I used my book, “Earning Freedom,” to illustrate my vision for a system where prisoners could work toward earning their freedom.
The release plan that led me through prison opened opportunities for me to begin advocating for reforms that would incentivize a pursuit of excellence. Anyone can read the historical efforts that began early in my journey:
Teaching and advocacy require a long-term commitment. A plan keeps a person on course, even in the face of adversity.
Following my belief in the power of rehabilitation, I founded Prison Professors. I designed courses that would prepare individuals in prison for a successful life upon release. Over 300,000 people have accessed our flagship course, “Preparing for Success after Prison,” which helps participants define success, set clear goals, and cultivate attitudes and behaviors conducive to personal and professional development.
I am particularly proud of our success stories, especially Halim Flowers’s. Halim was serving a double life sentence. Halim managed to secure his release through his commitment to preparing for success upon release and has since flourished as a successful artist and activist.
I began advocating for incentives decades ago, as shown through my published writings, my work as a professor, and my work helping influential people understand the importance of incentivizing excellence. You can see the history of that advocacy with the following links:
The signing of the First Step Act in 2018 marked a significant victory. This law enables individuals to earn higher levels of liberty through merit and preparations for success. I continue to fight for further reforms to reduce recidivism rates and empower incarcerated individuals to transition successfully into society.
We’re working to improve outcomes for all justice-impacted people through Prison Professors. We can build safer communities by teaching hundreds of thousands of people how to create effective release plans. Through the data we collect, we hope to influence legislation that further incentivizes prisoners to work toward earning increased levels of liberty.
Some of those advocacy efforts include:
Despite the challenging circumstances, I built a fulfilling personal life during my incarceration. I married Carole Santos during my 16th year of imprisonment in 2003. We nurtured our marriage during my final decade in prison. Revenues generated by my work in prison allowed Carole to return to school and become a master’s educated registered nurse. She now works closely with me as an integral partner in our shared mission to improve the outcomes of America’s prison system.
Besides working on our family businesses, Carole and I enjoy working on our investment projects that bring value to society.
I want my journey to serve as a reminder that regardless of past mistakes, everyone can work toward becoming a better version of themselves. We, as a society, should create mechanisms to encourage this progress.
Thanks to leaders like Frederick Douglass, Socrates, Nelson Mandela, and others, I learned the power of resilience. Any of us can transform our lives, despite past mistakes.
Prison Professors Charitable Corporation