Cleaner Data, Truer Numbers: Why Our Profile Count Just Went Down

If you follow our progress numbers closely, you'll notice something unusual in this update: the total number of profiles on Prison Professors went down. We want to explain exactly why — because it's good news.

What happened

Over the past months, our community has grown quickly. People in custody create profiles through tablets and mail, family members create profiles for their loved ones, and our team creates profiles when participants send work through CorrLinks. That growth came with a hidden problem: sometimes the same person ended up with two profiles. A mother would start a profile for her son while he was creating one himself. A participant's mailed-in lessons would arrive under one record while their CorrLinks work landed under another.

A quirk in how we recorded Bureau of Prisons register numbers made these duplicates hard to spot. The same number might be saved as "12345-678" on one profile and "12345678" on another — the same person, invisible to our duplicate checks.

What we did

We standardized how every registration number is stored and displayed across the platform — over 4,600 records were cleaned up in that pass alone. That immediately revealed hundreds of duplicate profiles: more than 800 cases where one person had two records.

We then built tools to carefully merge each pair into a single profile. Nothing was deleted from anyone's body of work: every journal entry, book report, release plan, earned point, and follower moved to the surviving profile. For the handful of cases where two different people appeared to share a register number, we verified each one against the official BOP Inmate Locator and corrected the records by hand.

Why it matters

• One person, one record. Participants now have their complete history — every lesson, every point — in a single place they can share with case managers, probation officers, and future employers.

• Fair leaderboards. Points are no longer split across duplicate profiles, so rankings reflect real effort.

• Accurate mail and book shipments. Our free workbook and book programs depend on knowing exactly who is where. Clean records mean fewer lost shipments.

• Numbers you can trust. When we report our reach to corrections partners, supporters, and the Bureau of Prisons, the counts now reflect real people — not database records.

We've also added safeguards so this doesn't happen again: if someone tries to create a profile with a register number that's already in our system, we let them know a profile exists and help them claim it instead of creating a duplicate.

The bottom line

Our community didn't shrink — our count got honest. Every person we serve is still here, now with a single, complete record of their work. We think that's worth a smaller number.

If you believe your profile was affected by a merge, or something doesn't look right, write to us or reach out through our contact page and we'll make it right.