How I got here

My story, and how this is all possible

Introduction

My name is Preston Thorpe, I’m 31 years old and I’ve spent just under 10 years of my life in Prison (all for non-violent drug crimes.) I am currently incarcerated at Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston, Maine. More importantly, far more importantly, I am a software developer, open source maintainer, contributor and all around enthusiast. I am a Rust fanatic, and I love linux, Neovim, Alacritty, Tmux, tiling window managers (DWM), and doing everything possible from the command line.

Idk who will even end up reading this, but thats the whole idea of blogs right? Ideally maybe the Primeagen will read it at some point, I feel like it’s right up his alley. I have lots of respect for him, I really appreciate him sharing his own story and particularly the message of working hard for what you want, and also to stay away from bullshit/drugs. He has actually been a pretty big inspiration for me in the tech world and I’ve been following him for over a year now. So on the off-chance that you’re reading this: Thanks for everything you do, you have been an enormous inspiration to me, and the only source of entertainment I’ve allowed myself for the last year+.

Anyway…

The (relatively) short version: I was a stupid 17yr old computer geek, spending my highschool years in the ‘05-‘09 warez and torrent scenes(r.i.p. oink.cd) and was kicked out of my parents house for being a stupid 17yr old like many kids are, but instead of ending up broke and homeless sleeping in my car or on couches (I did that for a bit too though), and coming back to Mom + Dad’s apologetic, as I’m sure was their plan; I ended up stumbling head-first into the world of the pre silk-road/Dark-web internet wholesale drugs. This was a place where chemicals could be bought for pennies from sketchy companies in India, China, and there were vendors in Canada, Holland, Germany, etc that sold bulk of whatever you wanted all by email referral.

So instead of coming back home broke and apologetic, I ended up pretty deep into this and soon was making tens of thousands of dollars a week, very much unapologetically. At age 20, I was arrested the first time. I was caught (mostly) with MDMA coming in the mail from Vancouver.

Prison:

I have found that I adapt pretty well to just about whatever situation I happen to be put in, Prison was no different. Although, these people were very different from the hippie/raver/music festival people I dealt with on the street. These people were hardcore addicts, who many of were into crimes and a lifestyle that I had no part of. The thing about prison is that it has its own sub-culture, it’s own lingo, it’s own set of morality.. and this is enforced by an extremely negative group-think, strict mindset that we are criminals: we hate cops, we hate rats, pedophiles, thieves(only if you steal from other inmates, you can steal whatever you want from any grandma on the street) and anyone that has ever “PC”‘d (asked for Protective Custody due to fear of violence from another inmate(s)). This mindset is strictly enforced on everyone living in population, and spending a few years around such negativity will change anyone. In prison, there is nothing to do: except get tattoos, work out, and wait for some kind of drama to unfold so you can either watch something go down, or participate in it.

A few years later, I left prison with $0 in my pocket (lawyers and commissary are expensive, and nobody pays you what they owe you when you come in), to a rooming house with hallways that smelled like crack-smoke and were filled with parole officers and junkies. I was left with the difficult choice of either living there and walking to a temp agency with hopes of making $10.50/hour doing manual labor (without an ID or social security card at this point), or getting on a bus to NYC to see some associates, and coming back in a week or so with $15-25k in my pocket and living in comfy luxury hotels until I could rent an apartment… I chose the latter: and obviously, was back in prison after a short 14 months of addiction and misery.

I have been incarcerated now on this sentence since May of 2017, I came in with a terrible attitude, a terrible outlook on life, and no hope for my future. I have spent almost 3 years all-together in 22-23hr solitary confinement over the years (10% of my life?), and at one point I had truly become one of the people that looked at me when I first came to prison at age 20, and asked “Is this your first bid?”, to which everyone replies “first? I”m not coming back here!”, to which there is always laughter from the older heads. Everyone says that, but everyone comes back…

Growing up:

My poor behavior and the perceived ‘influence’ I had in the relatively small prison system that I came from, ended up getting me put on an inter-state transfer list after 13mo in solitary confinement (for no disciplinary action.) “Safety and security of the facility” is the official reason it says on my classification paperwork. Little did I know, this would be the single best thing that would ever happen to me.

Because I had no disciplinary action, and I guess very some fortunate timing, I got transferred to Maine, which is not a state that I thought was even an option as it does not have a reputation for taking ‘problem’ inmates from other states.

The prison system in Maine is different from all others, as the inmate population is insulated from most of the street/prison gangs that generally run things. Not having to deal with the Politics and the drama was refreshing, and a bit of a shock at first. Quickly I realized that my time could just be spent on myself, trying to improve my life or just do what I wanted with my time. I began to focus my time on things like teaching myself about organic chemistry, and finance, options trading, and I began for the first time to realize that I might be capable of more than what I had resided on, and that I could end doing whatever I put my mind to.

I had previously accepted my fate, as one must when you get a 10+ year sentence, otherwise you’ll go insane constantly thinking about what you could have done different or what you could have been doing with your life. But I had accepted my fate, as a criminal. I had accepted the identity, and the lifestyle, and the misery, and the mindset that comes along with it.

One day, I woke up and looked around me, and had what can only be described as an epiphany. All of a sudden, all the conversations I would hear about drugs and war stories, all just sounded like absolute bullshit to me, and I was suddenly ashamed that I ever participated in it. From that point, I no longer felt like it was okay or normal that I was locked up in a cage, and the acceptance and self-identity as being a ‘criminal’ no longer felt like something I was okay with.

When it was available to me, I enrolled in College through the University of Maine Augusta, and before classes even started, I was completely enthralled with the idea of learning how to program again (it had been 15 years since I had done some PHP/Perl + simple websites, so not a lot had left over). But wait.. Who else has an opportunity to spend 12+ hours a day learning something for years? With no other obligations or responsibilities? It all of a sudden clicked, that I would dedicate the remainder of my time to learning everything I could about computer science, and teaching myself software development. The next ~three years would be spent exactly this way, to the very day I write this. There is zero substitution for hard work, and I intend on continuing to use every moment of my remaining sentence to improve myself and my skills.

During the pandemic, staff were sympathetic to the residents here, who were unable to see loved ones, and unable to spend their time on the internet when everything was shut down and we were locked in our rooms like they had. This brought about the internet being brought into a prison system, for probably the first time in the country. Being technically inclined, led me the opportunity to work for the education department and I ended up helping considerably in getting things working properly. And I still do.

After helping with the network for some time and implementing some software solutions for the DOC, when I asked for permission to seek remote employment, they obliged. I was one of the first people in the country to to be allowed to be on “remote work-release” from a medium security prison.

I believe this highlights the fact that you cannot take opportunities that you are not given, and I would never be in the position I am now: a completely changed man, working full-time from my cell, with a career doing what I love not only programming, but also helping improve the system.(details); if this opportunity wasn’t given to me in the form of a laptop and limited internet access. This is an incredibly rare situation, Maine is the only state in the country where these particular opportunities exist at all (and for a limited number of residents, currently just those enrolled in College, and there are many restrictions).

I am very grateful for the opportunity, but I recognize that this is very much the exception and not the rule, and the success of the Maine model of corrections should highlight the absolutely embarrassing lack of opportunities in the rest of the system, to do anything but become a bitter, broke criminal; deprived of not just your freedom, family, financial security and reputation, but also of your self-identity as someone worth investing in changing. We need to do better as a society, and understand that, yes, there are people in the system that deserve this kind of punishment, but a large majority of our prison population are just regular people… non-violent drug offenders like myself. There are plenty more, like me, that are capable of being responsible, productive, tax paying members of society if given the opportunity, but you cannot expect anyone to change when you just lock them up in a cage with a bunch of other criminals where there is a subculture of endless negativity.

If you are interested in helping support the education of incarcerated and justice-impacted individuals, please consider donating to a company like the one I currently work for, Unlocked Labs or similar non-profits like The Last Mile or Recidiviz that are working to improve the system of mass-incarceration and provide opportunities for the incarcerated to learn and grow.

Thanks for taking the time to read this…

-P

EDIT: Wow.. I definitely wasn’t expecting this to get to the front page of HN. In light of this, and some harsh, but undoubtedly fair comments that were made(as well as some completely ignorant ones). I would like to add some clarification on a few things.

I have been an opioid addict for over 10 years, and to this day prescribed suboxone, being treated for OUD as well as recently having been cured of HEP C from years of drug abuse. As an addict and someone that has seen this lifestyle, and drugs in particular claim the lives of countless friends (2 of them extremely close to me. RIP Mark Bochner, Scott Young.) I am absolutely, and forever will be ashamed of any participation I had in that lifestyle and for perpetuating the scourge of addiction. I would like to apologize publicly to anyone that has been affected by this, and there is no excuse for my actions, other than the same (terrible) one I give am forced to give for all of them. That I was young, ignorant, addicted, and I held absolutely no value for own life, nor lives of others. I am genuinely sorry and ashamed on a level that could never be properly communicated, and I understand that although I will have to live with that for the rest of my life, many others will not get that chance.

In the system, people are very open and accepting of their fate. Jokes are often made about how short someone was ‘on the street’, or bets will be placed how quickly someone will be back (always in months). Everyone speaks about release as if it is temporary, like a vacation from their accepted fate of prison or death. This is contagious, and when someone loses all value for their own life in acceptance of that fate, it creates a population of miserable, hopeless people with nothing to lose. As stated in the original post: I did not value my own life, nor did I believe I was capable of anything more than the life I had resided to.

Update 10/03/24: it’s been almost a year since I posted this.

In May I was promoted to Senior Developer + tech lead for the product team, so it’s been very exciting leading development with a team of 6 going on 7 people now, and all of the other responsibilities that come along with it. I have had the chance to conduct technical interviews for two developer positions we filled, and I have spent the past few months teaching/mentoring another resident in a different facility in Maine who I was put in contact with. I had heard he matched my level of discipline by putting in 14 hour days learning every single day. That has been the most rewarding thing I’ve done, because he put in a tremendous amount of work and we are now hiring him this week and I am fortunate enough to see and have directly contributed to the same life altering changes that have happened to me over the past few years.

I cannot recommend enough that devs volunteer some time teaching or mentoring, not only do you learn a ton yourself but it is really exciting seeing how efficiently you can teach someone else the things that you had to meticulously piece together yourself. Optimizing someone else’s learning path scratches the same automate/optimize itch we devs get naturally, and the feeling that you are positively impacting someone’s life is a great feeling.

Today I was promoted to Principle Engineer and it looks like I will be leading development for UnlockedLabs for the foreseeable future, even after I am released. We are expanding our project plans and moving forward with building an SIS platform focused on providing meaningful education to incarcerated students and helping people earn and receive good-time credits, allowing their progress to be tracked across facilities and platforms.

(Meeting some coworkers IRL for the first time!) Unlocked Labs visit

Hoping to be eligible for Administrative Home Confinement in the next 3-8 months. I know I’m ready to get home and spend meaningful time with my family.