Preston Thorp is a software engineer at San Francisco Startup. He is also serving his eleventh year in jail.

If you leave some important details, all Preston Thorp has to do a promising tech company to become a senior software engineer.

For about six months Six, Thorp Database Company was led by an voluntary partner in the Open Source Project TURSO. His work was so impressive that CEO of Trosovo, Glober CostaQuickly offered him a job. It was also when Costa realized that Thorp was anything other than an ordinary programmer.

“I checked his gut hub profile, and he mentioned the fact that he was kept in prison,” Costa told Tech Crunch. “This is a story I have never seen before.”

This is true: Thurop is serving his 11th year in prison for drug -related crimes. Still, he has Worked full -time Since May, San Francisco’s start -up project from his cell.

“I approached him in January, just to understand and know it,” Costa said. “Since then, I have had a deep conversation with him about his heart change, which is why he stayed in a position where he is today (…) knowing his story, he personally increased our respect for him.”

Thorp is part of an experimental program in the Mine State Jail system that allows people to work on remote jobs from detention. Although unconventional, these opportunities have proved to be extremely recovery.

As a teenager, Thorpee resorted to selling drugs purchased from the Dark Web, and ended in jail for 20 years. He got out a few years later, but there was no money in his name and was not safe to survive anywhere, he was arrested again 14 months later.

“I was a complete fool,” Thorp told Tech Crunch on a video call from prison. “I withdrew from my life and wrote it completely, and just accepted that it was my life and he had no hope yet.”

Other probability

Thorp was defeated, but there were different projects. He was transferred from a New Hampshire prison to the Mountain View reform facility in the mine before pandemic diseases, which he could hope for hope.

He reminded, “When I came to the mine, it was completely different.” It was only me. I felt in fact as if it had not ended; Maybe I can really end a normal life. I had such an episode: ‘I’m going to make something myself.’ ‘

In Mountain View Prison, Thorp enrolled at Mine University in Agista. At the same time, Colby College wanted to hire one of its imprisoned graduate students to become an Adjment Professor. It was an unconventional proposal, but the Mine Department of Corruption Commissioner, Randall Liberty, felt like a risk.

Commissioner Liberty told Tech Crunch, “After considering, I let it happen, and over time, it was very successful.” “His students can come to jail, and they can wander around them. It provides real diversity of opinions, ideas and backgrounds. It makes it a rich environment to learn.”

Now, about 30 prisoners, counting in Thurp, are working in a residential unit, which is a low -restricted prison facility for prisoners who have displayed a long track record of good behavior. All remote jobs have surrendered to the state 10 % of their salary, and in addition to any other payment that may be needed to help restoration, legal fees, or children.

“Mine has been a real ground breaker in this area,” Haley Shoof, co -executive director Unfliced LabsTell Tech Crunch. Unfliced Labs, where Thorp worked before Toururo, hired imprisonment and former imprisoned engineers to create education software used in prisons.

“(Mine) kept all this infrastructure in its place during the covid to allow remote education, and once that the infrastructure was present, suddenly, it extended the amount of opportunities that people could benefit from.”

Recovery was done okay

Commissioner Liberty has worked in law enforcement agencies for 43 years, but after serving in Iraq, his point of view about his rehabilitation began to change.

Commissioner Liberty told Tech Crunch, “When I returned, he gave me a sharp sense of understanding of traumatic tensions and trauma, and all of this is involved in reforms.” “I just began to see the trauma of imprisonment, the harmful effects of separation.”

When he was a warden of the Mine State Jail – the same prison where he went to visit his father in childhood – Commissioner Liberty began implementing programs that indicate the main causes of crime: use of substance use, non -treatment mental health problems, academic deficit and so on.

Commissioner Liberty said, “I have to be able to explain it to the right and left on the right and left.” When they hear that Preston is making such money, his jaw falls. And I tell them, ‘If you really care about making this community safe, if you care about being responsible, if you care about the victims and survivors in the society, this is a way to fulfill them.’

The United States is suffering from a return to custody after the restoration of the criminal justice system, or the release of former prisoners. Repeators create a financial burden on the criminal state and its taxpayers. But Commissioner Liberty has data to show that efforts and investment are capable of increasing access to education and addiction treatment.

“It’s very low -looking, funny to close them and suffer more shocking than they arrive, okay?” Commissioner Liberty said. “Many states have 60 % return to rates. In the mine, we roam between 21 % and 23 % for men. Women return at a rate of 9 %. And if you go to college classes in the mine, you return at 0.05 % rate – you don’t return at all.”

Commissioner Liberty has also found that under his scope, mine prisons became less violent. Last year, only 7 attacks were seen on the maximum security prison staff in Mine, which is a dramatic improvement from 87 attacks in 2017.

“When you treat people like people, they become the best version of themselves.”

Thorp itself is proof that Commissioner Liberty’s hard work is proving successful. The software engineer accepts full responsibility for his criminal history, but he feels like a changed man.

Thorp said, “This is like waking up to a dream, five years ago than me.” “I have all the memories of the road and why I came to jail, it doesn’t feel like it happened to me. It feels like it has happened to someone else.”

In the last three years, Thurp says it has spent most of his hours online, learning everything about programming.

Costa said, “He was partially doing this because he likes it, but also because he saw a chance to see. And he was fine.”

In the open source community, where the developer could often not put the face of a detacked or gut hub profile, Thorp was treated like another partner. It was the first time in a decade that he was able to take the first impression as himself-a Linux engineer who is interested in a relative database-and not as a criminal.

Thorp said, “The worst thing about the prison is that you (a criminal) assume this identity.” Giving a career to someone gives you the goal. “