June 4, 2026: Incentivizing Excellence

For the past several days, I have been advancing our mission by visiting the United States Penitentiary in Canaan, Pennsylvania, where I participated in several presentations for people serving federal prison sentences.

These visits remain a central part of our advocacy at Prison Professors. They give me an opportunity to interact with administrators, people serving lengthy sentences, and, during this trip, leaders from the Bureau of Prisons Central Office in Washington, D.C. Each visit helps me learn more about current developments inside the Bureau of Prisons. It also gives me opportunities to offer ideas on steps the system can take to improve outcomes for the people in prison, the people who work in prisons, and the communities that expect better results from our justice system.

My message is consistent: the system should incentivize the pursuit of excellence.

People in prison live apart from the people they love and the people who love them. They live in conditions that can diminish hope, motivation, and confidence. When a person does not believe that positive choices can lead to better outcomes, that person may stop working toward self-improvement. Incentives can help people keep moving forward.

During conversations with administrators, I encouraged them to think clearly about the outcomes they want. They do not want escape attempts. They do not want assaults on staff. They do not want suicides. They do not want weapons. They want safer institutions, more order, and better preparation for the people who will eventually return to society.

If people serving sentences can help produce those outcomes, the system should recognize that progress with meaningful incentives.

Those incentives could include opportunities to purchase food from the community, access to more programs, transfers to institutions with greater opportunities, furloughs, or family-centered visits. The specific incentive matters less than the principle: people should see a clear connection between the choices they make and the opportunities they can earn.

When I spoke with people serving sentences, I encouraged them not to wait for the system to change before they began preparing. I urged them to build a record that would show why they are worthy of more trust, more responsibility, and more opportunities.

That is why we built our program.

Prison Professors opens opportunities for people to memorialize their journey. Through biographies, journals, book reports, release plans, and other forms of documentation, people can create a record that shows who they are becoming. They can demonstrate growth, discipline, accountability, and a commitment to preparing for success.

I explained that by documenting the progress they are making, they become part of the change they want to see.

We cannot control every decision made by the Bureau of Prisons. We cannot control when policies will change. But we can control the work we do each day to advocate for reforms that incentivize excellence. We can also teach people in prison how to build records that make them stronger candidates for the incentives, opportunities, and liberty they want to earn.

That work continues.