Our company, Earning Freedom, covers all costs associated with maintaining the Prison Professors Talent website.

We’re committed to helping people in prison prepare for success upon release.

We’re inviting others to join these efforts to help people in prison prepare for success upon release. We use 100% of the resources that come into this website for the following activities:

• Distribute books and courses for people in prison at a 30% discount to the Amazon price,
• Donate books and courses to jails and prisons,
• Cover the costs of maintaining the Prison Professors Talent website at no cost to participants.

To comply with strict IRS Rules and California rules, WE CANNOT USE THIS WEBSITE TO SOLICIT DONATIONS to support the Prison Professors Charitable Corporation until and unless we become a “Commercial Coventurer.” To register for such status, we will need to post a $25,000 bond, and pay significant legal fees. If we choose to pursue that path in the future, we will make updates to this website.

If anyone wants information on how to volunteer with or support the Prison Professors Charitable Corporation, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Michael Santos directly:

• Michael@PrisonProfessors.org.

For due diligence to learn more about the mission of the nonprofit, please use the following links to access that information:

• IRS Ein Number: 85-2603315
• By Laws of Prison Professors Charitable Corporation

For clarity, the Prison Professors Talent website (PPT) is NOT a part of the Prison Professors Charitable Corporation, nor is the website a “Commercial Coventurer” registered with the California Attorney General. 

Sponsorship resources allow us to distribute more books and courses to people in prison, irrespective of their ability to pay the costs of that distribution. More than 300,000 people in jails and prisons across America access our courses through our direct relationships with institutions and through our relationship with the Edovo tablet company. Many of those students request additional resources. To the extent that businesses and individuals provide sponsorship, we can provide books and courses to people working to prepare for success upon release—at no charge to the people serving sentences.

What we Do:

We create resources to lower recidivism rates by helping people in jails and prisons prepare for success. Education transforms human lives. To end intergenerational cycles of recidivism, we teach justice-impacted people how to help themselves.

Join our coalition, that includes:

• Prison administrators,
• Employers,
• Taxpayers,
• Citizens,
• Law Enforcement
• Justice-impacted people

Why Us?

I’m Michael Santos, founder of Prison Professors. If you’d like more information on my backstory, please review the biography that I use as an example to teach people in prison. The biography includes links to show that I never ask anyone to do anything that I did not do to prepare for success upon release.

If you’re an American citizen, you may want to become a part of a solution to lower recidivism rates. We strive to help people emerge from the criminal justice system as law-abiding, contributing citizens. Through education, we can create good neighbors rather than good inmates.

I am passionate about striving to improve outcomes for all justice-impacted people. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, I strive to live as the change I want to see in the world.

A correctional officer brought me several books while I awaited my sentencing hearing in solitary confinement. Those books helped me believe that regardless of external circumstances, or the bad decisions of my past, I could work to reconcile and become a better version of myself—making amends with the people I hurt by committing crimes.

By reading about leaders such as:

• Socrates
• Frederick Douglas
• Viktor Frankl
• Nelson Mandela

I learned how to prepare for success upon release from prison. In a nutshell, I made a 100% commitment to:

• Educate myself,
• Contribute to society in meaningful, measurable ways, and
• Build a support network.

That three-pronged strategy guided me through the 9,500 days I served in prison and the ministry for advocacy that I’ve worked on since concluding my term on August 12, 2013.

Follow the graphical timeline below, with links, to see that I would never ask anyone to do anything that I didn’t do while going through prison, and since my release.

Why We’re Different:

We’re authentic. People in prison want to learn strategies to prepare for success from authentic people who have lived the journey. Through our Preparing for Success after Prison program, people get the undisputed and verifiable truth from a person who went through the entire phase of the journey:

1. A federal judge sentenced me to serve a 45-year prison term in 1987.
2. I spent the first several years of my sentence in a high-security penitentiary.
3. I transitioned to medium security, then low security, then minimum-security federal prisons.
4. While incarcerated, I earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree and published numerous books.
5. Rather than languishing in prison, I took incremental steps, holding myself accountable to achieve measurable results and memorializing progress.
6. By documenting preparations for success upon release, I opened income opportunities to facilitate my transition to society after 26 years in prison.
7. My personal release plan led to higher levels of liberty, generating business transactions valued at more than $10 million during my first 10 years of liberty.

Regardless of external circumstances, our authentic courses teach people that if they invest in themselves and build personal release plans, they can use time in prison to prepare for success upon release.

Prison Administrators:

When authorities transferred me from a federal prison to a halfway house, I began building coursework for people in prison. Since 2013, we’ve opened relationships with administrators from prisons in Maine to Saipan. Administrators pay annual licensing fees for some of our courses to cover our production and distribution costs.

Our country confines more than 1 million people. Institutional budgets do not provide sufficient resources to ensure everyone gets all the courses they want.

With so many people serving lengthy sentences, a need exists to provide more resources. More than 300,000 justice-impacted people access our courses. Every day, hundreds of people send us unsolicited letters requesting us to send more resources than the institutions provide. They want to continue preparations for success upon release.

Our courses teach strategies that people can use to prepare themselves. They are the same strategies that allowed me to build a comprehensive release plan, which translated into a triumphant return to society. Since I returned successfully, participants in our program believe that they can do the same.

We strive to encourage those people and hope you’ll join our efforts to help people in prison prepare for success upon release.

Coalitions:

To build our momentum, we need to profile more people who use their time in prison to prepare for success upon release. Join our coalition by sponsoring students and institutions. Since institutional budgets limit spending on rehabilitative programs, we’re asking citizens and businesses to help us match institutional budgets.

My small company, Earning Freedom, contributes a minimum of 10% of gross revenues to support our ministry. We use those resources to purchase and distribute books and courses at a 30% discount to the Amazon price.

Join our efforts by sponsoring students who request resources to help their preparations for success upon release. Consider the following sponsorship opportunities:

Option 1:

• Please contribute any amount you deem appropriate to support our efforts of helping people in prison prepare for success upon release. We will use 100% of those resources to further our mission.

Option 2:

• Make a recurring donation of $15 per month for each student you sponsor. We will provide students with books and lessons and build a profile page to show how hard the student you’re sponsoring is working to prepare for success upon release. You will be able to track progress by reviewing your scholarship page.

Option 3:

• With your commitment to an annual donation of $120 per student, we’ll offer the same resources as in Option 2, but at an average cost of $10 per month rather than $15 per month.

If you choose to join our coalition, you can expect the following to occur after you press the “click to sponsor” button for the option that is right for you:

Step 1:

We will send a confirmation email with specifics about the sponsorship you selected.

Step 2:

We will provide you with a transparency link so that you will know how our nonprofit deployed the resources that you provided.

Step 4:

If you’ve selected a recurring subscription, you can expect to receive an automated email one week before our system auto-bills your credit card again.

If you would like to connect to learn about opportunities to volunteer with or support the mission of Prison Professors Talent, please connect with us.