August 13, 2012: Fill & Download for Free

Well, my experiences differ from most. While I was serving a 45-year sentence, I worked incessantly to reach beyond the walls and connect with society. I educated myself, I wrote books, I built an Internet presence. All of that work helped me to open new relationships because it put in the eye of society. Through writing, I made people aware of my work. One of those people was a woman named Carole Goodwin.Carole and I attended school together as children, but after we graduated from Shorecrest High School in North Seattle back in 1982, we did not have any contact. She discovered my writing on a whim, and that led to her writing me a letter in prison. Despite my being scheduled to serve 12 more years when I received her letter, we built a correspondence that evolved into a romance. After nearly nine months, Carole traveled from her home in Portland, Oregon to visit me in the prison where I was held, in Fort Dix, New Jersey. We fell in love and married in a prison visiting room on June 24, 2003.Carole and I became a team during the final ten years of the quarter century that I served in prison. Books I wrote to help others understand prisons and the people who served time inside of them generated an income that supported Carole. We deployed some of those earnings into her education, and she earned a degree as a registered nurse. Now she is returning to school to earn her master's in nursing.In summary, Carole and I "dated" under the bright lights of prison visiting rooms. We nurtured a magnificent marriage despite our never being allowed a minute of privacy. She picked me up when I was released from prison on August 13, 2012 and it pleases me to build my life around her now. Those who have an interest in reading about the entire journey may purchase Earning Freedom, the book that describes the odyssey between the day of my arrest, on August 11, 1987 through the day of my release.Sam Whiting, of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote a front-page story of our journey. Inmate shares prison survival strategiesHome Page @ Michael Santos

Quora dies every July, only to be reborn. Then it dies again in August. Rinse, repeat:Mar 24, 2010: Has the quality of questions, answers, and comments on Quora declined?Jul 27, 2010: Is Quora becoming unpleasant and authoritarian?Dec 28, 2010: Did Quora's quality suddenly get a lot worse over the Christmas weekend? If so, why?Jan 07, 2011: Has Quora jumped the shark or hit the tipping point?Mar 03, 2011: Has Quora become boring?Mar 22, 2011: Quora (product): Is it me or have the questions on Quora gone from interesting & informative to kind of monotonous & mundane?May 03, 2011: Quora Content Quality: Has Quora lost some of its luster?Aug 03, 2011: Has Quora evaporatively cooled?Sep 19, 2011: Quora User Feedback: Is interest in Quora waning? If so, what might be some of the reasons?Dec 20, 2011: Has Quora become too chaotic after the introduction of boards?Dec 20, 2011: Privacy on Quora: Has Quora become too noisy?Dec 21, 2011: Has Quora lost its way?Dec 23, 2011: Is Quora succumbing to feature bloat?Jan 23, 2012: Has Quora lost some of its "magic"? If so, why?Mar 22, 2012: Quora: Has the quality of questions and responses on Quora been going down lately?Jun 26, 2012: Quora Content Quality: Is Quora quickly becoming more like Yahoo! Answers?Jul 13, 2012: Quora: Why has Quora suddenly plummeted from interesting intelligent discussion to questions about wearing sneakers without socks and fantasy fist fights between US Presidents?Jul 16, 2012: Quora: Why is Quora turning into Yahoo Answers?Aug 13, 2012: Quora: Why does Quora continue to underachieve?Mar 17, 2012: Quora: Is Quora becoming a popularity contest?Mar 20, 2012: Quora (product): When did Quora jump the shark?Sept 19, 2012: Quora: Are many "Quorans" disillusioned with Quora? If so, why?July 8, 2013: As of July 2013, is Quora dying?

There are many aspects about imprisonment that people who've never experienced it wouldn't understand. In a fundamental way, prisons differ from life in the United States. I don't simply mean that people in prison have lost their liberty. Prisons differ from other areas of life in the United States because they do not offer a mechanism through which people can work to improve their lives in ways that are measurable during the term of confinement.Of course, a prisoner can work to develop himself physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, or in other ways. A prisoner may develop skills or talents. But regardless of how hard he works, he is powerless to influence his release date beyond the strictures put in place by the sentencing judge and the system itself. The fundamental flaw of the system, as I see it, is that prisons extinguish hope by removing mechanisms through which a man can work to earn freedom.Although I was never incarcerated inside of a state prison, I began serving time in the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta after my conviction for trafficking in cocaine back in 1987. I served the subsequent 9,135 days in various federal prisons and I was released from the Atwater federal prison camp on August 13, 2012. I documented that journey extensively at my website MichaelSantos.net as well as through numerous books that I wrote on the subject of prisons, the people they hold, and strategies for growing through confinement.More than anything else, however, I think that people who've never been incarcerated before have a hard time understanding this fundamental flaw of the prison experience that I describe above. Namely, through the disciplinary code, prisoners have an infinite number of ways that they can exacerbate the conditions of their confinement. But there isn't any corresponding metric that would allow him to work toward enhancing his level of liberty in an objective way. All that mattered in the prisons that held me were the number of calendar pages that turned and the avoidance of disciplinary infractions. It's one of the reasons that recidivism rates remain so stubbornly high.