For a justice-impacted person, the biography page opens an opportunity. We can create a record to show how we’re working to recalibrate and prepare for higher levels of success. The more we reveal about our actions, the more credibility we build.
Although I concluded my obligation to the Bureau of Prisons in August 2013, I followed the same strategy that powered me through the journey. In our course, Preparing for Success after Prison, I detail the strategy in ten easy steps:
- Define success,
- Set goals that align with how we define success,
- Move forward with a 100% commitment, showing the right attitude.
- Aspire to something greater than what you’ve got right now.
- Act in ways that harmonize with how you define success.
- Measure your progress with clear accountability metrics,
- Keep your head in the game, stay aware of opportunities, and make others aware of your commitment to excellence,
- Show your authenticity by developing your tools, tactics, and resources that will accelerate your prospects for success.
- Celebrate every achievement, no matter how small, because you know that every achievement puts you on the pathway to new opportunities.
- Live in gratitude, with an appreciation for the blessings in your life.
On August 12, I will celebrate ten years since completing my obligation to the Bureau of Prisons. To advocate for reforms that will improve the outcomes of our nation’s criminal justice system, I must help more people in prison understand the importance of documenting their journey.
Iterative Biographies:
While serving my sentence, many leaders provided examples of steps I could take to build pathways for success. They took the following action:
- Visualized success as the best possible outcome,
- Developed plans to resolve problems and create solutions,
- Prioritized the first goals they should work toward,
- Built tools, tactics, and resources to accelerate the plan,
- Measured progress with daily accountability,
- Adjusted their plans as obstacles changed, and
- Executed their plan every day.
Leaders published their progress regularly and invited others to hold them accountable. The strategy kept them moving forward. By following their example, I became more resilient. That resilience has helped me to build a career. It’s not the career I would have chosen had I not spent 26 years in prison. But I know we must live in the world as it exists rather than as we want it to be.
Prison Professors Talent:
Over the past several months, I visited more than 25 prisons. Interacting with more than 2,000 people inspired me to create a new platform that will help those people prepare for success upon release. I’ve invested hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in developing this site for the past several months. It will further our effort to advocate for changes that help more justice-impacted people prepare for success upon release.
The platform is part of a broader strategy that aligns with the abovementioned steps. To change an entrenched system, we must go through several stages, leveraging our strengths, considering our weaknesses, opening opportunities, and anticipating our threats.
SWOT Analysis:
In this addition to my bio page, I’ll describe how this tactic carries us through the next quarter and the next year with a SWOT Analysis:
Strengths:
My work ethic serves as a strength, as I devote time each day to develop new tools, tactics, and resources. For example, in July 2023, we began building Prison Professors Talent. With our new web platform, we’ll create a machine to profile people working to develop exceptional and compelling adjustment strategies. They can use this resource to open new opportunities and build a career upon release, as I did.
We published a new softcover book on Amazon: Release Plan—2024: How to Prepare for Success after Prison. We also published an audible edition of Preparing for Success after Prison.
These strengths further our ministry of helping more justice-impacted people prepare for success. The resources facilitate our mission of persuading stakeholders that it makes sense to:
- Reform laws and policies to incentivize excellence,
- Introduce work-release programs for people in federal prison,
- Consider expanding the furlough program,
- Open more opportunities for people to earn higher levels of liberty through merit.
Through our nonprofit, the Prison Professors Charitable Corporation, we’ve raised resources to hire a UCLA professor. She is doing a study to evaluate the effectiveness of courses we distribute to more than 300,000 people in jails and prisons nationwide. Her research will advance our efforts to build evidence-based programs that can improve the outcomes of America’s criminal justice system.
Weaknesses:
As a 59-year-old person who served 26 years in prison, I am fighting the challenge of time. In 11 years, I will be 70. By then, I hope to see policy or legislative changes that will make the prison system more of a meritocracy. In other words, we advocate for reforms that incentivize excellence. We can measure justice through a person’s efforts to reconcile with society rather than by turning calendar pages.
But time is ticking. We incarcerate more people than any other nation on Earth. Statistics show that the longer we keep people in corrections, the less likely those people are to function in society as contributing citizens. When people learn to live in prison, they become less likely to succeed upon release. I feel a real sense of urgency to change laws that keep people in prison when they could be home and functioning while still serving their sentence.
I need more financial resources to build a scalable response to the multi-billion-dollar ecosystem with a vested interest in keeping the prison system growing. I must think creatively and work harder to overcome this weakness.
Opportunities:
We can bring more people into our fight as we grow our digital footprint. We can inspire university students to intern with us. They can become volunteers for social justice, helping us generate more attention. We have an opportunity to build a coalition that includes:
- Justice-impacted people: By documenting their efforts to reconcile with society and prepare for success, we can show why reforms that incentivize excellence make sense.
- Administrators: We reach hundreds of thousands of people by bringing our programs into more jails and prisons. If they’re preparing for success upon release, they’re improving the culture of confinement. If the culture of confinement improves, administrators will be receptive to advocacy for more incentives.
- Employers: We can collaborate with employers who want to help this social-justice initiative of improving outcomes for people who’ve gone through the criminal justice system.
- Taxpayers: When we improve the outcomes of the criminal justice system, we simultaneously create resources that build stronger communities. We reduce recidivism and end intergenerational cycles of recidivism.
Threats:
As a formerly incarcerated person, I am always conscious of trolls. Many people do not want to work hard to build successful solutions. The more successful I become, the more I put myself in the pathway of people who conspire to slander our work. For example, I hire formerly incarcerated people as part of our ministry. One person I hired, Sam Mangel, deceived customers who trusted us. We removed Sam from our company because of his deception and misrepresentations. To protect us against the threat of Sam’s continued deception, we published documentation to show what our customers told us. Sam then conspired with others to launch a relentless smear campaign, sometimes hiding under the alias John Eastman.
With our SWOT analysis, we’re always on the path to improve. My updated profile pages show the daily commitment to staying the course.
