31. Your Profile and Advocacy

When we ask policymakers to create more opportunities for people to earn freedom, we must give them reasons to support change. They may question whether people will use those opportunities responsibly. They may want evidence that preparation can improve conduct in prison and help people succeed after release.

Your profile can contribute to that discussion.

Prison Professors works toward reforms that would allow all people to earn time credits and create additional pathways to liberty, including a modern version of federal parole. Many people oppose those changes. To persuade them, we need to show how people respond when they have tools, encouragement, and reasons to prepare.

Our nonprofit provides the platform and free educational resources. Each participant decides how to use those resources. The biographies, journals, book reports, and release plans you develop give us examples of people taking responsibility for their futures.

Connect Your Preparation to the Mission

A comprehensive mitigation strategy helps you prepare for the opportunities you want. Your record may help a prospective employer evaluate your readiness, a mentor understand your goals, or a decision-maker consider a request for greater responsibility.

That same work can support a broader argument for reform. When many people document learning, contribution, and sustained preparation, we can show policymakers what participants are building.

Before the end of 2026, we anticipate that more than 10,000 people will participate on our platform. In 2027, we anticipate working toward a study that can test our belief that participants are more likely to succeed after release and less likely to engage in disruptive behavior during confinement. Those remain expectations to examine through credible research.

Your participation helps us build a community whose efforts and outcomes can be studied.

Understand Individual Points

We assign points to written entries to make participation easier to measure:

• 101 through 299 words: One individual point.
• 300 words or more: Two individual points.

Your individual points accumulate as you continue contributing. For example, ten entries of at least 300 words would earn 20 individual points.

I recommend writing between 325 and 400 words per entry. That range gives you room to explain a decision, develop a lesson, or describe progress toward a goal. Regular practice can also strengthen your ability to communicate.

The writing behind the score gives readers something to evaluate. Explain what you learned, how you applied the lesson, and what you intend to do next.

Become an Ambassador

You can also contribute by helping others participate. We call someone who introduces people to this work an ambassador.

Explain how to begin a profile. Share what you have learned about writing entries. Encourage someone to answer a question from the Playbook or develop a release plan. Continue helping that person understand how preparation connects to future opportunities.

When someone joins and identifies you as the person who invited them, that participant becomes part of your tribe. The participant earns individual points for completed work, and those points also contribute to your tribe score.

Suppose you invite ten people, and each identifies you as the person who encouraged participation. Your tribe would include ten people. If each earns 100 individual points, their combined work would contribute 1,000 points to your tribe score.

Your individual score reflects your own written participation. Your tribe score reflects the participation you helped encourage. Together, those records can show preparation and contribution to others.

Keep Building Each Month

We also maintain a separate monthly leaderboard. This allows participants to work toward recognition for their current efforts, including people who joined recently.

Monthly standings give you another way to set goals and review progress. Consider how often you will write, which profile sections need attention, and whom you could help. Continue adding to your cumulative record while pursuing your goals for the month.

Use Your Record to Build Support

When you seek an opportunity, help the reader find the preparation relevant to your request. An employer might benefit from entries about skills and completed projects. A potential mentor might review your release plan and identify where guidance could help.

Our nonprofit can use participation records and leaderboards to identify examples, explain the work taking place, and advocate for policies that reward preparation. Research can help us evaluate whether that participation connects with better outcomes.

We will continue doing our part to advance reforms. We need people in prison doing their part by learning, contributing, and documenting progress.

Choose one action this week that strengthens your own preparation and one that helps another person begin. Your work can support your future while helping us build a stronger case for freedom through merit.