michael santos

Rather than focusing on living as a model inmate, more than 15 years ago I started thinking about what I would need to emerge as a law-abiding, contributing citizen.

In the second installment of the series, Michael G. Santos discusses his journey through prison and how he focused all of his time on reconciling with society and using his vantage point on the inside to learn more about the criminal justice system.

In this entry, Michael Santos accepts that he will only be seen as a criminal while on the inside, so he figures way to prepare for an exit and make the best of his time inside.

As I expressed in my initial blog entries, a commitment to prepare for a law-abiding, contributing life upon release drove my adjustment throughout the quarter century that I served. Had I not made that commitment to prepare for reentry early in my term, I’d now be living a life of complication and struggle.

Twenty five years ago, Michael G. Santos was convicted for trafficking cocaine. He reformed himself in prison and because of realignment, is able to spend the final year of his sentence in a halfway house in San Francisco. Here is the start of his story.

Upon my release, my wife passed me an iPhone 4S. It was far smaller than the Motorola cellphone that I used back in 1987, when my journey through America’s prison system began.