What is it like to be a geek in a prison?

If you'd still be earning in dollars, especially, cost of living in much of Europe would be really rough. You might get work permission yourself after half a decade or so of residency (that's how it worked for me), but I still don't see that it would necessarily help. Wouldn't application forms still ask about your criminal history?

I guess you'd be freer to lie on those forms without being found out, but that's an incredibly weak reason to move to another country.

When I was originally sentenced, I was sentenced to a "boot-camp" style facility, with the goal of doing 90 days of boot-camp style labor, and walking out of prison a free man with a parole term. Due to some paperwork issues, I was transported to the main prison camp (where the camp's goal was to treat sex offenders), and ended up doing 99% of my time at that camp instead, waiting for a bed to open up. By the time a bed opened up at the boot camp, I had less than three months left to go on my sentence, and chose to stay on the hill instead of the boot camp, and expired out with no probation or parole at the end.

Prison itself is a great sociological experience. There are three tiers of people -- the grunts (who have their own stack ranking system), the intellectuals, and the guards. Communication between any of the three groups is a challenge. Learning to talk to the 'grunts' always came with some intimidation. I ended up getting a job in the law library, helping other inmates type out legal motions and briefs. Fellow inmates would ask for my assistance with their appeals, and guards would ask for my assistance with their union cases. It was an interesting dichotomy, to say the least. You keep your head down, and only form alliances in which trust is the underlying factor. Around my 9th month there, there was a massive race riot in the prison, and I had both an African American guy as well as a Hispanic guy deflect conflict that was coming my way because of those relationships and the assistance that I had rendered in the library.

Upon my release, I went head-first into getting an education. I applied, and was accepted to MIT and RIT when I took the ACT and scored high on it, only to have my acceptances removed once they performed my background check. Two smaller religious colleges did accept me, regardless of my background, and I ended up focusing on engineering.

I graduated in 2003. I couldn't find a job until 2006, surviving on working small jobs for retailers (merchandising), and eventually going back to school for an MBA, graduating with my Doctorate in 2007.

Two things to realize:

1.) After each days passes and you stay out of prison, your chances of going back fall. 90% of recidivism occurs after the first year.

2.) After seven years, they can no longer report any criminal activities if you are doing a FDCPA based background check. That information will be there, but they're not allowed to use that information (in the state of California, at least). Banks and others use a SEC of FBI based background check, and those will always show.

I ended up getting a pardon in 2009. It cost me about $100,000 and was shady as all hell, and then took me another 18 months to clean up from the various background check providers, but, now my background is clean, and I have worked for big companies and startups alike.

Prison isn't the problem, it is the lack of opportunities that exist after prison that's the problem. Housing options are closed for you once you're released because of your record -- nonviolent or violent. Employment opportunities dry up. Educational opportunities no longer exist, or the funding isn't there due to your conviction. If you don't hustle every day, a felony record is the equivalent to a civil death sentence -- you have doors that close up and things that cannot be fixed until you either die, get it expunged, or have it no longer work for you.

One of the largest single sources of arrests and convictions are the drug war -- I will not call the police if I see someone buying, selling, or using drugs. A lot of people on the other hand, will call the police because they see something "suspicious" and that suspicious behavior might not even be illegal.

In addition, lots of crimes occur with context, and sometimes the context muddles what true justice would be. If you don't know the context behind what you're seeing, it's easy to think the police will help when the reality may be anything but. If people are stealing because they or their loved ones are hungry, are the police really the best option? People seem to be more content to call the police than they are to take difficult steps to try to ensure that people are fed and cared for, and that's a problem. I want to live in a world where people are able to have good relationships with their neighbors, to know how they're life is going, and be able to offer support for them if they need it -- and all of those should be easier and come more natural than calling police on their neighbors to externalize the problem.

I could see someone hassling someone else, but for all I know they're stepping up to someone who has consistently attacked or harmed them or their loved ones. At some point - seeing someone who is being sexually assaulted, seeing people who are surviving domestic abuse, etc. - I do believe there's a moral imperative to help the person who is being victimized and if calling the police is the best way to do that then by all means. But in my view these crimes are the small minority of crimes that fill the jails and prisons, or that the police get called about.

Anyhow. Obviously there are times when I think everyone is best served by calling the police. If I had to choose between "see something, say something [to armed police who will then involve themselves with violence]" and "stop snitching" my preference would be stop snitching. Things are often more nuanced than either allows, however.

If it's a stolen wallet or bicycle I'm not going to call the police (unless necessary to get a report for insurance purposes) and it's not my job to play detective and find the perpetrators. I do believe that the police usually make bad situations worse, but that doesn't mean I don't believe there are bad situations where they can help.