Book Report – Prison 8,344th Day
Begin: 7/6/2023
Finished: 7/9/2023
Title: Prison 8.344th Day
Author: Michael G Santos
Why I choose this Book:
To see how an inmate with Plans and Goals spends his day in prison.
What I learned from this book:
In order to survive in prison, we need a have Goals and Plans to ensure a successful reentry into society as law-abiding contributing citizens.
Goals are:
- Educate.
- Contribute to Society.
- Build a support network.
To accomplish the goals we need Plans:
- Define success at different stages.
- Create plans that would lead to incremental steps of success.
- Put Priorities in place.
- Build Tools, Tactics, and Resources that would advance us along the plan.
- Develop accountability metrics to measure progress.
- Execute plans daily.
Along the journey, we have role models which we can emulate and use to develop and inspire us. There will be lots of obstacles to prevent us from executing our plans but instead, we should create strategies to build strength, regardless of the authorities’ decision or setbacks we might endure. Avoiding interaction with other inmates brings stability and helps us make progress toward reaching our goals. Inmates’ emotion can change due to family, finances, death, or other mental issues, thus avoiding interactions allow us to avoid them and concentrate our time on our goals. We have to anticipate the challenges of dealing with people who are skeptical of dealing with a convicted felon, Instead, we should anticipate such challenges and prepare to overcome them. Invest time in personal-development projects, like learning to communicate effectively like verbal skills, better writing skills, and building a robust vocabulary and better reading skills which could improve our critical thinking skills. We have to exercise to stay healthy to reach our fullest potential. Also, alone time during running or walking gives us time to plan and make goal-oriented decisions. In prison, we have to make good use of our time to accomplish our goals. Most inmates waste their time sleeping, watching television, and aimlessly wandering about because they don’t have a structure. We interact with POB officials particularly our Counselor who oversees Bunks, Jobs, and visitation lists, and our Pax # for email and telephone. The case manager monitors our release dates, Financial Responsibility Plan FRP, and Pattern scores, assesses when we may qualify for transition to community-based confinement, and relocate our case location to our home or community locations, they can make our life good or miserable. The straight-A guide begins with two prerequisites: 1) Define success, and 2) what is the best possible outcome. It set clear goals to bridge the gap from struggle to success. The first A is attitude: People who succeed have an attitude of self-reliance, they always work to help themselves. External forces may present obstacles. A person with the right attitude can still make decisions that advance them incrementally toward the goal that they want to achieve. The second A – Aspire. Those striving to succeed aspire to something meaningful, they have clear ideas of what they want and they envision themselves achieving those aspirations. Next is Act – Aspiration leads to Action. Other A’s are: Awareness, Accountability, Authenticity, Achievement, and Appreciation. Imprisonment affects the spouse and inmate’s emotions. Never underestimate the threat. Daily life in prison if planned properly will keep you busy with preplanned tasks and activities, it is routine and methodical. The preplanned tasks will help you develop skills, resources, support network, and fitness, as a contributing citizen.
Michael Santo’s aspirations are to help justice-impacted people to see what is like in prison, help them to plan a successful reentry to society, publish books and a website to help inmates avoid recidivism, and advocate for prison reforms by incentivizing progress to a successful reentry to society.
How this book will help me contribute to my success upon release:
This book will help guide me to prepare myself for reentry by acquiring skills, resources, a support network, and a fitness level. How to avoid recidivism by following conditions of supervised release. Prepares me physically and emotionally during reentry to the community and re-engaging with my family.
