After 25 years in jail, the Internet blew my mind

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/after_25_years_in_jail_the_internet_blew_my_mind_partner/

by l33tbro • 13 years ago

250 130 13 years ago

zalew3• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_G._Santos

While in prison, he divorced, got married, received a college degree from Mercer University in 1992, a master's degree from Hofstra University in 1995, began a doctorate, and developed programs and resources for inmates and their families.

well, you can say he got a lot of time for that in there, but still, wow.

colmvp• 13 years ago

While in prison, he divorced, got married...

Wow, even prisoners get more life progress than I do lol

Houshalter• 13 years ago

In all seriousness how does one date in prison?

akandiah• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybristophilia

Obligatory Dilbert reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqzoxBBQ4pU&t=7m15s

asveikau4• 13 years ago

The whole time reading this article, I thought, sounds good, but having spent 25 years in jail he must have done something pretty bad.

Then I read that Wikipedia article and it turns out he was caught selling cocaine in his 20s...

Man, say whatever you want for drugs being bad, but that's kind of a BS reason to rob someone of their youth like that. For 25 years I thought maybe he'd killed a guy.

downandout• 13 years ago

There are many people, mostly drug mules that weren't necessarily even aware of what/how much they had been assigned to carry, that are serving life in prison. It's all based on how much they had on them and what type of drug, and much of it is arbitrary. For example, until 2010, the sentence for simple possession of a single gram of crack carried a mandatory minimum of five years, whereas someone found with 100 grams of powder cocaine would likely face probation.

SeoxyS2• 13 years ago

If you watch the video embedded, you'll see that he actually ran a large network that smuggled cocaine from Miami to Seattle. A little more serious than the kid who sells an 8-ball to his college classmate.

flexie• 13 years ago

Yes, that's all I could focus on as well when reading the article. What kind of non-violent crime deserves 25 years in prison: Cocaine dealing? Where I am from, selling cocaine on a grand scale (huge amounts, running an organization, smuggling etc.) would put you behind bars for maybe 6-10 years, although in theory you could receive a 16 year sentence.

dools• 13 years ago

If you're interested in drug policy you might like a recently released documentary called "The House I Live In": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125653/

babuskov2• 13 years ago

I completely disagree with you. Think how many lives he destroyed by hooking people to cocaine. I have a friend who became a cocaine addict by falling for a nice guy who turned out to be dealer. She's still struggling, but she'll never get last 10 years of her life back. Now, multiply that with 30+ people he was dealing to, and you get much more than 25 years. Punishment should be hard unless we want to see more and more people doing it. It's all about perceived risk and profit, after all and if risk is higher there would be less people doing it.

goggles995• 13 years ago

This is a problem mentality. Obviously the sentence was not harsh enough, because he still ran a huge cocaine smuggling operation. I wonder if the penalty for running a cocaine operation was death (like in lowest crime rate Singapore) if he still would have done it? If he did, Id bet the next person would not have.

It is impossible to predict the murders and overdose deaths that a drug kingpin ultimately causes. Also we have robberies, scams, shoplifting, assaults, Law enforcent and legal system costs, children who follow same the vicious cycle ETC...

The mindset someone of saying that a sentence like this is too harsh is weak, new age, wussified emotion (as opposed to sound and proven logic). Do you think that being a drug kingpin is something that you could ever do by accident? He made a conscious choice. A decision, over and over again until he was caught. His benefit outweighed the risk in his mind. If anything, the punishment should be heavier.

Look at a country like Singapore, they have the lowest crime rates on the earth. Crime has fallen every year for the last 20 years. Why? They are harsh on crime unlike us wussy western nations. Many Asian countries share a similar story.

It is clear if you listen to any of Santos' speeches, that he is playing a victim. He never takes responsibility for his actions. All he can do is take jabs at the legal system. He remains a deviant. I bet that if his money dries up and his wife leaves him that he will go back to a life of crime. He has done a lot to help prisoners become successful, and I agree with a lot of what he says, but I think that he is sorry for being caught, not for his crimes.

dghughes• 13 years ago

I thought the same thing then thought it's the US so maybe drugs, yup.

With such a large cocaine network in the 80s, especially in Miami, I doubt there weren't some deaths directly connected to the operation.

alexvr• 13 years ago

I don't think I could handle a quarter century in prison. That's just insane. Had his sentence been closer to 30 years, he would have served his first term the year my dad graduated from college, and he would have been released the year I intend to graduate. Crazy. 25 years is longer than I tend to think. It's from, like, black-and-white Beatle-mania to the Apple Macintosh. Or, in this case, from the Macintosh to the iPhone.

mardix• 13 years ago

This article has been posted so many times now... c'mon people...

CoachRufus87• 13 years ago

first time I've seen it. thanks OP

antoinec• 13 years ago

At this moment it's in first position, I guess that's because most of HN readers (including me) haven't read it before, so the repost is totally worth it.

jader201• 13 years ago

I agree but I think, as a general rule on HN, that any repost - or maybe any article dated earlier than the current date - should include the date in the title.

atechnerd4• 13 years ago

I thought I had seen it on HN as well, but I just searched around and realized it was a Quora post from 3 months ago that I was thinking of by the same guy. Apparently Santos went from knowing zero about technology to being a viral marketing master.

vecinu• 13 years ago

It's not surprising with his unique story...sensationalism sells, especially when it's true.

jdgiese• 13 years ago

Hmmm... it is on the top of HN (maybe again); whats the problem?

l33tbro2• 13 years ago

OP here. Honestly, hadn't seen it posted. On HN multiple times per day. Very surprised at the traction of the article, given it's a month old story. Whatever, it's a great narrative for people.

aashaykumar92• 13 years ago

The story is amazing. But what continuously went through my head was how different our world will be 25 years from now. It'll be 2038...what will technology be like?

If you take a second to realize what it was 25 years ago, what it is now, and then ask yourself what it WILL be in 25 years...well shit, I was left speechless.

glurgh• 13 years ago

There will be no complex digital technology in 2038. Unix time will have ended. If you are particularly well-prepared, you may be able to trade 37 bushels of unhulled oats for a hand-cranked shortwave radio receiver. An even, disembodied voice on it will remind you to remain indoors.

cmircea• 13 years ago

Old joke...

SmokyBorbon• 13 years ago

Except for computers and the internet, science and technology have been stagnant for the past 50 years. Our civilization is in decline. In 25 years, we will only have slightly refined versions of what we have today.

OGinparadise2• 13 years ago

"So, other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080803233506AA...

gngeal2• 13 years ago

"science and technology have been stagnant for the past 50 years."

Exactly, especially the continued use of old drugs, lack of modern genetics, continued use of Bakelite and iron instead of aiming to develop newer materials such as composites and carbon fibers and modern alloys is appalling. And we still don't know how old the universe is, if there are planets at all outside the Solar system at all, we still have to wait for the images of outer planets, nobody really knows how to fight cancer, people around the world are starving because the green revolution has never happened, treating complicated medical cases is difficult due to the lack of X-ray tomography and MRI, sailors still navigate using a sextant because a global satellite navigation is completely inconceivable and innocent people rot in jail even though DNA evidence could prove their innocence at least in some cases.

WalterBright2• 13 years ago

My great-aunt remembers the time the first car arrived in her village in the 1800s. She lived to fly across the Atlantic in a jetliner, and see the moon landings.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

She remembers? Wow. That's amazing. How old is she now then?

babuskov2• 13 years ago

You surely mean 1900s, right? Or 1890's?

larrythefox• 13 years ago

This is awesome. I doubt it'll get much attention on here, but this guy has done something amazing from an otherwise terrible experience and made a difference.

If anyone wants to dig a little deeper, there are a lot of organizations working with prisoners for success stories like this. Check out http://thelastmile.org, and http://startupnow.org.uk

CatMtKing• 13 years ago

http://youtu.be/A1mhhtpmXfo -- last mile in Norway.

Instead of condemning inmates, rehabilitate them.

yareally2• 13 years ago

It was Sweden (with a similar system to Norway) where Frank Abagnale[1] (Catch Me If You Can) spent some time and spoke highly of the penal system of the Scandinavian countries. I think he mentioned they were paid a fair wage, able to take real college courses (not just correspondence) and made other attempts at real rehabilitation.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale

draugadrotten2• 13 years ago

The Swedish system tries to rehabilitate prisoners using various evidence-based methods. For some types of prisoners it works very well.

Prisoners are paid but only a few cents per hour. They generally spend it all on buying cigarettes.

The punishments are much lower in Sweden than in the US. Drug smuggling offences and murders carry the longest penalties. I would say on average penalties are a factor 5x or 10x lower. This seems to be good for both criminal and society. Prisoners know they will have a life again after prison so they want to rehabilitate and prepare.

However, the last 10 years of very high immigration from the muslim countres of middle east and north africa is rapidly filling Swedish prisons. The chief of Kumla maximum security facility was recently in the news saying that 80% of his prison are muslim. Politicians don't want to touch the subject out of fears of being branded racist, but it's vividly discussed on the net in forums such as flashback.net

elux• 13 years ago

>"Maybe prisons in the US should be paid on rehabilitation rate and not incarceration rate."

Credit: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/196pe7/norwegian_...

jbrooksuk2• 13 years ago

Another page about the exact same thing was here the other day. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5593659

xijuan2• 13 years ago

I KNOW! I am a bit surprised that people are talking about it again. Well, it is an amazing story...

jbrooksuk2• 13 years ago

Don't get me wrong, it's a good read, and Michael should be so proud of what he's achieved within those 25 years and be excited for the future. I wish him the best of luck.

I'm just amazed that this story is being regurgitated by an audience who will probably visit HN every day.

l33tbro2• 13 years ago

Yeah, OP here, didn't think people would even click this .. but you always never know with HN.

soheil• 13 years ago

Must watch video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=w...

exodust• 13 years ago

It's a good talk. He's very confident, has a good message, and really doesn't like the CCA. His argument seems spot on, but changing a 750 billion dollar won't be easy. He needs a few more incarcerated "disciples" to come good after following his program or methods, to learn behind bars and emerge from prison all knowing. Proof other than his own story is what's needed, because not all education is equal. You can call a dusty old library with crappy books "education" and get the green tick at "prison education audit time".

pied_piper• 13 years ago

This guy is dangerously naive. He seems to think (with ardent passion) that regimes in the middle east fell because "Twitter made that happen."

Okay, sir. Time to settle down and reel that nonsense back in.

He speaks emotionally about things that aren't necessarily tethered to reality and his facts aren't precise, and maybe he has the amnesia of a politician.

His message is that prisons are bad, and that we should rethink the manner of punishment we exact on people. His passion is very obviously motivated by personal experience, and that doesn't invalidate his message. Essentially, I agree with him. But. I'm not drinking his kool-ade about "OMG INTERNETZ."

Yes, I'll entertain his notions about prison being an inefficient and destructive practice that mostly leaves inmates as damaged wrecks, and possibly transforms many into more terrible criminals than they might've been without jail time. But I'm going to take his message with a grain of salt.

When I say dangerous, I mean it. He is too new to the internet, to extoll its virtues. In the same talk in which he absolutely RAILS against the privatization of prisons (which is an evil all its own, and yeah I'll agree with his points on that) his next words advocate just haphazardly dumping absolutely anything into the hands of large, corporate, profit-driven nigh-monopolies like Facebook. There's a cognitive dissonance in those two concepts that he very obviously hasn't thought deeply about (and to be fair, maybe he hasn't been given the time yet).

Which is surprising, I might add, considering that he's a man who had his mail read by prison staff, his phone calls monitored, and was displaced across 19 prisons during his time served.

He needs to acclimate himself with some of the debacles of the recent internet over the past 5 years in particular, and maybe familiarize himself with personalities like Julian Assange. If he can bring himself to understand certain realities about the internet, and how it can enable evil as well as good, maybe he wouldn't be so quick to proclaim that it's some kind of universal salve, which can cure all our ills.

xijuan2• 13 years ago

I had a recent post about how this guy got married in the jail: http://www.quora.com/Prisons/How-do-you-nurture-and-maintain...

I think the story was a bit too good to be true. If it is completely true, it is just too amazing!!!

mistercow2• 13 years ago

What kind of idiotic policy is it to keep prisoners from using the internet, computers, or electric typewriters? Are they trying to make it so that prisoners have no options but crime once they get out?

unimpressive• 13 years ago

I'd believe that.

yoster5• 13 years ago

It would be harder to monitor inmates. Prisons have to monitor written letters, phone calls, and visits. As a taxpayer, would you want to allocate more of your hard earned money for computers for prisoners?

ThomPete2• 13 years ago

In a hundred years from now, they will look at the war on terror end the criminalization of it as one of the most useless and primitive forms of legislation ever made.

Tens of thousands of innocent people gets killed every year, because we don't want people who have made far more conscious "choices" to become heroine addict.

tokenadult3• 13 years ago

He writes as a man who is grateful to enjoy the freedom of outside life again. I posted the article to my Facebook wall with the tagline, "He really appreciates what he was missing."

Since the big comment subthread here is about the author's criminal history and what that means to society, I should probably comment on that issue too. I've lived in east Asia, and once upon a time, I thought that there was a generation of Americans who had all heard of the Opium Wars and understood the historical context of why several countries in that part of the world want nothing to do with their common people having access to most drugs. Harsh drug laws in some places--including the death penalty for what seems to Americans like dealing rather small amounts of drugs--is a reaction to a historical experience in which whole countries were ruined by foreign drug dealers (British imperialists trading in opium) and their local agents. I'm not personally in favor of the death penalty for all drug dealers, but I can empathize with (for example) a parent of a child who started using drugs who would want the child's dealer in prison for the rest of his life or even dead.

Of course we want to look to other countries for historical examples too. In Europe, where the historical experience was different, there has been some decriminalization, but very little "legalization" of drugs.

http://www.holland.com/us/tourism/article/dutch-drug-policy....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/03/dutch-dr...

http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/time-to-end-the-war-on...

I am tentatively convinced that a national drug policy that focuses mostly on keeping users from harming other people and on helping users to stop using is perhaps a better national drug policy than harsh criminal penalties for dealing in drugs--in countries that have already established a drug-using culture. But east Asia, with very harsh drug laws and a culture of limited use, is doing well in human progress,

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/15/singapore...

http://www.economist.com/news/21566430-where-be-born-2013-lo...

so that policy choice has to be put in the mix too in evaluating what will work well as the United State reforms a national drug policy that everyone seems to decry.

mseebach• 13 years ago

I was under the impression that the Opium Wars were not primarily about opium, but rather imperialism. The British wanted control, so did the Chinese. If it hadn't been opium, it would have been, god knows what, silk or pepper.

> I can empathize with (for example) a parent of a child who started using drugs would want the child's dealer in prison for the rest of his life or even dead.

I can empathize too, but this runs counter to the idea of justice. I'd want to have the hand chopped off the guy who stole my bicycle (actually, I'd want to do it myself), but justice must separate the passion of the victim from an objective measure of the damage the crime did to society.

gnosis2• 13 years ago

Smearing every substance that happens to be illegal in a certain country at a certain time with the pejorative label "drug" both unfair, ignorant, and counterproductive.

Good arguments could be made for considering alcohol, coffee, and cigarettes "drugs", and yet most people don't think of them in that way.

In fact, in some societies alcohol, coffee, and tobacco were outlawed -- even to the point of instituting the death penalty for their posession or use.[1][4] In some societies, the posession or consumption of alcohol is still forbidden; while in others it's quite commonplace and not considered a big deal.

Coffee drinking has been accepted nearly everywhere as a virtually harmless or even beneficial activity. But look at the fear and outrage it generated in earlier European society as evidenced in Bach's humorous Coffee Cantata,[2] or in the Middle East where for a time it was made illegal.[4]

Perhaps one could argue that opium is worse than coffee, alcohol, or tobacco, and so deserves to be called a "drug" and made illegal. But counter arguments have been made that at least alcohol and tobacco are actually worse, and should be made illegal if any of these substances are. Alcohol actually has been made illegal in the US in the past and that hasn't worked out so well.[3]

And where does all this leave psychedelics, many of which have been shown to be far less harmful than opium, alcohol, and tobacco? In fact, many studies have shown the benefit of psychedelics when used constructively for therapeutic purposes.[5] There's also a long history of psychedelic and other currently illegal substance use in religious ritual, and of the belief that these substances are sacred.

Should people go to jail for helping themselves and others, for peacefully practicing their religion, or for seeking to expand their minds and awareness through these substances? Should these substances be called "drugs", "sacraments", or "tools"?

Advocates of the so-called "war on drugs" often will not accept or even acknowledge the possibility of constructive, positive currently illegal substance use. They tend to smear all such use as drug abuse.

Yet much of what society values: music, art, literature, religion, technology, science, and medicine has been positively influenced by currently illegal substance use.

To take one relatively uncontroversial example: odds are that much of the music that most readers of this post listen to every day was inspired directly or indirectly by these substances. It might not say that on the album cover, but dig in to it a bit and you'll see that either the musicians who made the music themselves used these substances to inspire their music, or the musicians who strongly influenced them did. The same goes for a lot of art and literature. This leads to another important point: much of the good that currently illegal substances do is unacknowledged because there's a stigma against admitting that you use or approve of them.

If you look at the history of mind-altering substance use and the reaction of socieites to these substances, a clear pattern emerges where it is usually new mind-altering substances that are feared and made illegal, while mind-altering substances that have had a long history of use in that society are tolerated or even considered sacred (as in the wine drunk during Catholic rituals, or coffee's use by Sufi mystics[4]).

Another feature of drug prohibition is that there are often religious, moralistic and puritanical aspects to reactions against certain substances. Some altered states of consciousness achievable through the use of these substances are considered to be "impure" or "derranged" in some way, and their users are considered immoral, depraved or wicked. Anti-drug crusaders often adopt a moralistic, "holier than thou" attitude towards users.

Racism and xenophobia are other common features of the drug war. Substances which minorities choose to use (like crack used in black ghettoes) are stigmatized, while substances which the dominant majority chooses to use (like cocaine use in white suburbs or on Wall St) are effectively tolerated.

Political opportunism plays a huge role, as does the eagerness of politicians to appear like they're being "tough on crime".

Finally, there's the economic aspect -- where the prison industry, police, lawyers, judges, and the Drug Enforcement Agency benefit from arrests, imprisonments, and asset forfeitures. The alcohol and tobacco industries, and arguably the pharmaceutical industry also stands to benefit from keeping certain substances illegal.

[1] - Just one example of many: "c. 1650 The use of tobacco is prohibited in Bavaria, Saxony, and Zurich, but the prohibitions are ineffective. Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire decrees the death penalty for smoking tobacco: "Wherever the Sultan went on his travels or on a military expedition his halting-places were always distinguished by a terrible increase in the number of executions. Even on the battlefield he was fond of surprising men in the act of smoking, when he would punish them by beheading, hanging, quartering, or crushing their hands and feet . . . . Nevertheless, in spite of all the horrors of this persecution . . . the passion for smoking still persisted.'" - http://www.trivia-library.com/a/history-of-legal-and-illegal...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Cantata

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition

[4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22190802

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_therapy

Iterated• 13 years ago

I cannot imagine how shocked he must have been to have such immense amounts of knowledge at his fingertips. Coming out of prison and seeing new incredible technologies would be amazing. When I was a teenager I worked at a grocery store and I was washing my hands in the bathroom. The faucets were motion activated. A man walked up to them and looked at them and then looked at me and said, "How do you turn these on?" I told him that you just put your hands underneath and they turn on automatically. He said, "Wow, I've been in prison for a while."

GhotiFish• 13 years ago

   "Staff members oversaw policies that placed enormous barriers between the 
    people inside boundaries and society. In the prisons where I served my 
    sentence, prisoners were even prohibited from accessing electronic 
    typewriters. They had their reasons, I suppose, but blocking people inside 
    from using technology did not go far in preparing them for success upon 
    release."

They have a very good reason actually. Any mechanism for communication will let people on the outside order people they know on the inside to murder other people they know on the inside. Prisons have to go to great lengths to prevent message passing and compartmentalize prisoners from each other. Quiet a few are just itching to kill each other, apparently.

GFischer• 13 years ago

Well, they could work harder on the 2nd part and relaxing the first.

Prisions have a LOT of wrong things with them, which vary from country to country.

In my country there's so much overcrowding that Human Rights people aren't exactly clamoring for Internet access - there was an atrocious fire a while back which killed a lot of inmates, there simply aren't enough prisions.

After 25 years in jail, the Internet blew my mind

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