Digital Economy:

Thanks to Ryan Saleme, an long-term ambassador of the digital economy, we gathered resources to build this workbook. Our world continues to advance at a rapid pace, and our course on the digital economy will help participants become more fluent with the language and with the development of cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, decentralized finance, and the entire digital economy. By building more knowledge about these concepts, people will be in a better position to:

• Secure employment,
• Create income streams,
• Understand markets,
• Invest or speculate

Incentivizing a Pursuit of Excellence:

Our team at Prison Professors uses this course to persuade stakeholders to support reforms that will empower the Bureau of Prisons to incentivize the pursuit of excellence. Those arguments led to Earned Time Credits in federal prison and Milestone Credits in state systems. We’re continuing to advance those initiatives.

We must collect data to persuade stakeholders, including business owners, citizens, and administrators to join our coalition. Those influencers can show legislators why reforms that allow people to earn increasing levels of liberty through merit can improve the culture of confinement and contribute to community safety.

I began making those arguments more than 20 years ago while working through the depths of a 45-year sentence. I began serving that sentence during a different era. Legislators had passed laws that removed incentives, calling for truth-in-sentencing. If a judge imposed a lengthy sentence, lawmakers wanted people to serve the entire sentence.

Those legislative changes resulted in a larger prison population. As high recidivism rates show, they did not result in safer communities.

Coalitions:

This project became possible when Ryan Salame began volunteering with our nonprofit. When he asked how we could use his time most effectively, we asked that he devote time to building this course that will help more people learn about the digital economy–beginning with cryptocurrency.

As people work through these self-directed courses, we hope they will document their progress by opening a profile on our website at: PrisonProfessorsTalent.com. By building a profile, participants will make it easy for anyone to see how they’re working to prepare for success upon release, and our nonprofit will be able to show stakeholders the value of incentivizing excellence. We continue to advocate for all people serving sentences in federal or state prisons.

When people build profiles that memorialize their preparations for success, we collect evidence that we can use to influence:

• Prison administrators,
• Judges,
• Prosecutors,
• Probation officers, and
• Business leaders.

Together, we should work toward bringing changes in policies and laws that will empower administrators to incentivize the pursuit of excellence. Those incentives may include:

• Broader use of furloughs,
• Work release programs,
• Access to compassionate release and commutations.

We can only succeed in our work if imprisoned people invest in themselves. When people prepare for success upon release, we can show that we’re working:

• To make prisons safer,
• To lowering recidivism rates, and
• To end intergenerational cycles of imprisonment.