When people face prison, the first thought is usually the same:
How do I get out?
I understand that. I lived it.
When authorities arrested me, in 1987, I had never been incarcerated before. The charge exposed me to a sentence that could have been life in prison. Authorities placed me in solitary confinement during the first year of my case, and I didn’t have a real understanding of what would come next.
Learning how to think differently changed my life. I stopped being afraid, and I started focusing on strategy. Thanks to guidance that came from prayer, and insight I gained from reading books on leadership, I began asking better questions:
How do I build the best possible outcome from the worst situation of my life?
That question became the foundation of my journey through federal prison preparation, personal growth, and long-term reentry planning.
Face the Truth
I knew I was guilty. But instead of accepting responsibility and expressing remorse, I went to trial. I testified. I lied to the jury. The jury convicted me on every count.
At sentencing, the judge imposed a 45-year sentence.
That was the moment I had to face reality. I could not change the past. I could not undo the bad decisions that brought me there. But I could decide what I would do next.
Too many people enter the system focused only on the short game. They want relief today, but they do not think enough about the path ahead. Whether you are still thinking about sentence mitigation or already preparing for time in federal prison, the principle is the same: truth comes first. If I do not tell myself the truth, I cannot build a plan that works.
A Three-Part Plan
While I was in solitary confinement, an officer brought me books that helped me think in a new way. One of the biggest influences was Socrates. His ideas pushed me to ask how I could become a person who brought value to society, even while living in a cage.
From that reflection, I built a three-part plan.
First, I would use my time in prison to get an education.
Second, I would work to contribute to society in meaningful and measurable ways.
Third, I would build a support network.
That plan gave me direction when everything around me felt unstable. It also gave me a way to measure progress. I was no longer just serving time. I was building a record. I was creating a new story.
After sentencing, the U.S. Marshals Service transferred me to USP Atlanta. At the time, it was one of the most violent federal prisons in the country. The prison was thousands of miles away from my family in Seattle, and I always felt the presence of danger.
Still, I held on to my strategy. I started writing letters to universities. I got into school. I earned an undergraduate degree and began work toward a master’s degree through Hofstra University.
That progress helped me accept that even in prison, I could take action.
Solve Big Problems
After six years at USP Atlanta, the institution became more volatile. I still had decades to serve, and I wanted to achieve the goals I had set. I began thinking about places that might open more opportunities for me to reach those goals. I also began thinking about what steps I could take to make a transfer possible.
I could not simply ask to move to a specific prison. The Bureau of Prisons has broad discretion, and if I requested a transfer, I could go anywhere. I would not know the administrators making the decision about where I served my time, and they would not know me. I hoped for a specific result: a transfer to the prison that would give me the best chance to continue my education safely.
So I reverse-engineered the problem, starting with the outcome I wanted.
During a visit, I spoke with one of my mentors, Dr. R. Bruce McPherson. He was a professor from a university in Chicago. I told Bruce about the danger in the prison and that the time had come for me to transfer.
Not knowing as much about how the system operated, he suggested that I simply ask staff to transfer me.
I explained how transfers worked and why I needed to take a more deliberate approach if I wanted a specific outcome. To succeed, I needed a methodical plan:
I needed to build influence within the BOP so that I could gain more support.
I would use that influence to gather information about prisons. Specifically, I needed to know which institution would offer the most support for educational programs.
Then I needed to tap into my resources so that I could create the best pathway to the prison that offered me the best opportunity.
That strategy led to an article that Bruce and I coauthored called Transcending the Wall: The Prisoner and the Professor. A peer-reviewed journal published the article, which referenced Sylvia McCollum, a senior Bureau of Prisons administrator who oversaw education. The tactic of sending her the article opened opportunities for Bruce to visit federal prisons, meet with supervisors of education, and speak with people serving time there.
The steps we took helped me identify FCI McKean as the best prison for me.
Then I tapped into other resources by writing to another mentor, Norval Morris. He was one of the nation’s leading penologists. He had relationships with administrators in the agency. With his influence, I got the outcome I wanted.
Tools, Tactics, and Resources
If you are in prison, love someone in prison, or advocate for someone in the system, ask the same questions I had to ask:
What is the best possible outcome?
What resources can I build?
What tactics will move me closer to that result?
At Prison Professors, we offer free resources that anyone can use to work toward the best possible outcome. A good place to start is by building a profile to memorialize all the ways a person is extraordinary and compelling. The harder a person works to develop that profile, the more effective it becomes as a tool. It becomes an asset, a resource that can help build coalitions of support.