Success After Prison with Michael Santos - Episode 2: The Beginning in Prison

Episode 2: The Beginning in Prison

02/17/16 • 22 min

Success After Prison with Michael Santos

I’m Michael Santos and I’m typing this manuscript on an awesome Mac Pro computer. When I served my sentence, I had to write all of my manuscripts by hand. Now I’m addicted to Apple products and word processors. These tools allow me to write much more efficiently, but I no longer have the time that was available to me while I was in prison. Again, that’s why I won’t devote hundreds of hours to editing this manuscript. At least for this draft, what you see is what you get.

I started typing this manuscript on Saturday morning, December 4, 2015. I don’t know how long it will take for me to finish, but I’m going to do my best to finish a solid draft before the end of this year. Why? Well, it may seem strange, but I’m scheduled to visit the United States Penitentiary in Atwater on January 8, 2016.

After speaking at a judicial conference in Sacramento that I wrote about in the introduction, I had a conversation with Warden Andre Matevousian. He extended an open invitation for me to return to Atwater—the prison that released me in 2013—so I could meet his team and make an address to the prisoners inside. I welcomed the opportunity.

Twenty-eight months have passed since I concluded my 9,500-day journey as a federal prisoner. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, which I’ll explain in the chapters that follow. But in order to help readers understand more about how I opened opportunities that few would expect for a man who served so much time in prison, I need to provide some context—at least an abbreviated background.

If you’ve read my earlier books, particularly Earning Freedom: Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term, you won’t be learning anything new in this chapter. I won’t take the time to provide the same level of detail as I wrote in that book. Those who want a more comprehensive glimpse of my prison journey will find value in Earning Freedom. After this initial chapter, the remainder will show how decisions in prison related to opportunities and success I’ve been building since my release. We’ll start with the backstory.

Background: In 1982, I graduated from Shorecrest High School in Seattle as a mediocre student. Then I started working with my father in a contracting company he established when I was a young boy. My father escaped from Cuba and worked hard to build his company, hoping he would pass the business along to me after I matured. Unfortunately, I disappointed both my father and mother.

When I was 20, in 1984, I saw the movie Scarface, with Al Pacino. Pacino played the character Tony Montana, a super cool Cuban immigrant who built a fortune trafficking in cocaine. Rather than wanting to follow in my father’s footsteps, I made the bad decision to follow guidance from Tony Montana. “In this country, first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the woman.”

I admired Tony’s philosophy.

His outlook on life didn’t work out so well. After seeing the film, I coordinated a scheme to earn quick money by distributing cocaine. Foolishly, I believed that I could shield myself from prosecution. By limiting my role to negotiating transactions and hiring other people to transport the cocaine, or storing the cocaine, I convinced myself that I could avoid the criminal justice system.

On August 11, 1987, I learned how badly I had misinterpreted the criminal justice system. In the late afternoon, I saw three DEA agents pointing guns at my head. They told me I was under arrest. Soon I felt an officer pulling my wrists behind my back and locking them in steel cuffs. My journey began. Over subsequent decades, I’d go through:

Federal holding centers Court proceedings Jails: Pierce County Jail, Kent Jail, Puyallup Jail, USP Atlanta, FCI McKean, Federal correctional Institution, Fairton, United States Penitentiary Lewisburg, Fort Dix, Federal Prison Camp in Florence, Federal prison camp in Lompoc, Federal prison camp, Taft, Federal Prison Camp Atwater. Residential Drug Abuse Program Prisons Halfway house Supervised Release Parole, and Special parole

The pages that follow will show how decisions I made inside influenced my life outside.

It’s my hope that this message will inspire you to begin preparing for your successful outcome.

Transformation after Trial: Wanting nothing more than to get out of jail, I welcomed my attorney’s optimism. When he told me that a big difference existed between an indictment and a conviction, I put my future in his hands. Then I proceeded to make every bad decision a defendant could make.

I refused to accept responsibility. I didn’t contemplate expressing remorse. While in custody, I stayed involved with the criminal enterprise that I had begun. I took the witness stand to testify during my trial and I lied to the jury.

Members of the jury saw through my perjury and convicted me of every count.

A New Philosophy:

After the jury convicted me, the U.S. Marshals retu...

I admired Tony’s philosophy.

The pages that follow will show how decisions I made inside influenced my life outside.

It’s my hope that this message will inspire you to begin preparing for your successful outcome.

Members of the jury saw through my perjury and convicted me of every count.

A New Philosophy:

After the jury convicted me, the U.S. Marshals retu...

Previous Episode

Episode 1: Why?

Success After Prison! How I Built Assets Worth $1 million Within Two Years of Release from 26 Years Inside (And How You Can Succeed, Too)

1. Introduction

My name is Michael Santos and I’m writing this book in a conversational style, wanting to share the story of my return to society after 26 years as a prisoner. This book isn’t about prison. It’s about overcoming struggle, or more precisely, about strategies I used to overcome challenges associated with long-term confinement. I’m convinced that we all face struggles or challenges at some point. Anyone can use the same strategies that empowered me to conquer struggle in their life. I’m sure of it.

Before I get into the strategies, let me explain why I’m writing this book so soon after finishing my prison sentence.

Judge Charles Pyle, a federal judge from Arizona reached out to me in early 2015. I didn’t know Judge Pyle, but he had heard about my journey and my work to improve outcomes for people who’ve been to prison. The judge and his team were coordinating the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, a major event that would take place later in the year in Sacramento. He expected several hundred leaders from the judicial system, the prison system, and other stakeholders who had devoted their careers to criminal justice. Judge Pyle asked if I would attend the conference as a speaker.

Since concluding my obligation to the Bureau of Prisons, in August of 2013, I’ve spoken for audiences across the United States, many dozens of times. Sometimes those events paid me well, other times I spoke without compensation because I believed in the cause. On one previous occasion, while I was still in the halfway house, I received an invitation to speak to judges in the Southern District of California. They wanted me to speak about what happens after judges sentence an individual to the custody of the attorney general. I received permission from the BOP and flew down to provide my thoughts.

So the invitation from Judge Pyle brought my second opportunity to influence judges since my release from prison. I looked forward to the three-day even in the fall of 2015. I heard that Paul Write, another formerly incarcerated individual, would also present as a speaker. I’ve known of Paul’s work for decades. Since I admired his commitment and discipline, I looked to meeting him.

Paul Wright started the award-winning newspaper, Prison Legal News, while he served a lengthy sentence in Washington State’s prison system. Although I’d never met Paul previously, his work inspired me for many years. When I began my term as a federal prisoner, Paul was beginning a term inside Washington State’s prison system. Prison Legal News educated others about case law pertaining to prisoners, and the newspaper published commentaries, essays, and perceptions about what was going in jails and prisons across the world.

Over the years, Paul grew the distribution of his influential magazine. Prisoners from across the country subscribed. Paul put a team together in the community. They took pains to make sure the magazine was printed and mailed to each subscriber. Many administrators resisted Prison Legal News, and I know that he paid a heavy price for his commitment to publishing. In addition to the newspaper, Paul authored several books. Since his work inspired me over the decades that I served, I was glad that we’d finally have an opportunity to meet at the Sacramento conference.

Paul and I walked to a restaurant after the first day of the conference so that we could talk over dinner. While eating seafood, I learned more about Paul’s commitment to helping people in prison. Prison Legal News, he said, reached more than 200,000 people each month. He suggested that I purchase advertising space to reach more people who might have an interest in or benefit from books I wrote.

Prior to that conversation, I never considered purchasing advertising for books. I wrote several books during the 26 years that I served in prison. Initially, I worked with publishers that had their own marketing departments. They controlled the distribution of the books through their end-user sales force or through their distributors. Publishers coordinated reviews that made book buyers aware of the various titles that I wrote.

Later, with the advancement of the Internet, publishing my own books became more efficient. Distribution came through various channels, which I’ll describe in the chapters that follow. Advertising to a mass audience hadn’t been one of my strategies. So when Paul suggested that I purchase an ad, I asked him more about the process and the readership.

Prison Legal News reaches prisoners in every state, he explained. In addition to the newspaper that went into prisons, PrisonLegalNews.org reached a wide audience of lawyers and others who were interested in prisons. Since I wanted to support his team’s effort with Prison Legal News, and...

Next Episode

Episode 3: 45-Year Prison Sentence

Sentenced to 45-Years:

My judge chose not to impose a life sentence. Instead, he sentenced me to 45 years. I was sentenced under a different set of laws than the sentencing laws that exist today. Under the laws that existed for crimes committed in 1987, I could earn 19-years worth of good-time credits. For readers who don’t know about good time, they’re rewards for avoiding disciplinary infractions. A prisoner didn’t need to do anything particularly good to earn good time. He simply needed to avoid being convicted of violating disciplinary infractions. So long as I didn’t lose any good time during my journey through prison, I would satisfy my sentence after 26 years of imprisonment.

Since I was 23-years-old when authorities took me into custody, I didn’t quite know how to process the concept of serving 26 years. Thankfully, by reading Socrates I had a vision and a strategy. By thinking about my avatars, I could craft a strategy that would allow me emerge successfully. I would focus on that three-pronged goal of working to educate myself, to contribute to society, and to building a support network.

I began serving my sentence in the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, thousands of miles away from where I grew up, in Seattle. While locked inside those high walls, I embarked upon the first prong of my plan. Although I’d been a lousy student in high school, I was determined to become a good student in prison. Why? Because I believed that if I could earn a university degree while incarcerated, people in society would respect me. And if more people respected me, I believed that more opportunities would open.

Since I didn’t have any financial resources, I began writing letters to universities. I wrote to hundreds of universities, not knowing whether anyone would read the letters. Still, I knew that if I didn’t write letters, I wouldn’t stand a chance of connecting with my avatars who lived on the other side of prison walls. Each letter expressed the same message:

I made bad decisions as a young man. As a consequence of those decisions, I served a lengthy term in prison. I wrote that I wanted to educate myself while inside and I asked for help. In time, I found universities to work with me. Those relationships I opened from inside prison walls resulted in my earning an undergraduate in 1992, and a master’s degree in 1995.

After Hofstra University awarded my master’s degree, I began studying toward a Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut. Then a warden determined that my education had gone far enough. He put a stop to my formal studies by prohibiting the prison’s mailroom from receiving books that the University of Connecticut’s library would send for my coursework. Fortunately, by then I had eight years of imprisonment behind me. That experience conditioned me to cope well with obstacles.

When my formal studies came to an end, I shifted focus. As I wrote in Earning Freedom and other books, I went through a phase where the stock market consumed all of my time. By studying how investors valued stocks I learned about business. I became fluent with “technical analysis,” learning how to assess a stock’s value in accordance with various trading patterns. By reading financial newspapers and magazines and books, I also learned about “fundamental analysis,” learning the importance of more objective metrics like growth rates, profit margins, return on equity, and other factors.

Studying the stock market, I knew, would be a poor substitute for real business experience. But serving a lengthy term in prison required that I look for “unorthodox” ways to prepare myself for success upon release. And the more I could learn about business, the more I would arm myself for the challenges I anticipated upon release.

What lessons could you learn with the resources you have around you? In the pages and chapters that follow, you’ll see how asking questions inspired me to learn as much as possible. It’s crucial that we use resources around us to prepare for success in our future. Without a deliberate plan, however, we sometimes fail to see the resources. Later, I’ll show the strategy that worked so well for me.

As we approached the turn of the century I crossed over into the second half of my sentence. I had 13 years of prison behind me and 13 years of prison ahead of me. I shifted attention to writing, wanting to advance purposely toward the other two prongs of my adjustment strategy. First I wrote articles and I submitted them for publication. Then I began writing chapters for academic books. In time, one of my mentors offered to introduce me to his publisher. Professor George Cole, from the University of Connecticut, presided over my Ph.D. program and he authored the leading textbook on corrections. George suggested that I write a book for an academic audience that his publisher could package as a supplemental text for university students who were...