My friend starts her first software engineering job today, after learning to program in prison.

Here's how she got the job, and how you can help more people like her get jobs after getting out:

First, let's be clear that my friend served 13 years for a serious, violent crime. Everyone who gets out needs a job. Not just people who did time for easy-to-rationalize or non-violent crimes. How else can they take care of their families?

Our communities are safer when we invest in everyone. And yet, people like her face tremendous employment discrimination.

Prison COVID outbreaks have me dwelling on how government should adopt the private sector’s performance management tools.

What if prisons had clear responsibility for specific metrics, published a strategy for improving them, & publicly evaluated quarterly objectives + results? The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s metrics could include:

The history of the California prison system so clearly lays bare its futility.

Did you know that Harry Houdini visited San Quentin in 1915? Johnny Cash recorded a triple-platinum album there in 1969. Golden State Warriors staff visit for a game every year. Celebrity visits are nothing new.

Eleanor Roosevelt toured San Quentin in 1943 to thank the prisoners for their labor during WWII. "Few institutions are more devoted to the war effort than California’s prisons."

But of course, prison labor is nothing new.

My friend Keith is a professor at Stanford and teaches a "Computers, Ethics, and Public Policy" class. He invited me and my friend / coworker Simon, who is formerly incarcerated, to be the guest speakers on the topic "labor in the tech industry" ...

https://twitter.com/RsheedLockheart/status/1283474374566146048

Simon shared how he learned to program in prison through @TLM, got out, completed @HackReactor, and got a full-time software job at @PilotHQ.

We talked about how more people need access to the economics of startups, because that cash + equity changes lives, changes families.

Do you support criminal justice reform?

I'd like to convince you that the COVID-19 prison outbreaks are a public health crisis that needs your immediate support and advocacy to release 50% of the CA prison population.

Sound radical? It's not. The problem, and how you can help: So far: 31 COVID deaths in California prisons. Hospitals near prison outbreaks running out of ICU beds. *Half* of San Quentin tested positive.

Medical community consensus: we must reduce the prison population by 50% to prevent outbreaks that will overwhelm our healthcare system.

Tech folks, I need you to join me as loud and clear voices from the business community demanding large-scale reductions in the California prison population to reduce future COVID-19 deaths, both inside and outside of our prisons.

Some facts: #1: COVID-19 outbreaks in our prisons are going to kill a lot of people if we don’t do something. This includes both incarcerated people and free people, because outbreaks are rapidly overwhelming the state’s heathcare system.

Let’s talk about @Wikipedia and the prison industrial complex.

Wikipedia is one of the 10 most popular websites on the internet. It had 25 billion page views in May. It is one of the greatest collaborative human achievements ever. What Wikipedia says on a topic matters, because it is often the top resource returned in an internet search.

A Google search on “police brutality” starts with a “featured snippet” from the Wikipedia page, plus an infobox on the right and many "People also ask" responses.

We’ve set up a really successful mutual aid calendar at work. Each week, we:

- Update the team on our existing community actions
- Start a new community action
- Support a local artist through a commission

Goal: sustained community engagement and impact during the quarantine. Week 1: raising money for prison canteen funds. So far, we’ve put over $5,500 on people’s books at 32 prisons in 4 states.

Week 2: joining orgs in a nation-wide call drive with elected officials on decarcerating prison and jails in response to COVID-19.

The polls are open at Dolores Park Church in San Francisco, Precinct 7826! I love volunteering with @SFElections, to play a tiny role in ensuring that everyone has a welcoming, accessible, and efficient voting process, but also to participate first-hand in a fascinating set of engineering, product, design, and operational challenges.

I first met Emile while he was serving a life sentence at San Quentin.

When his sentence was commuted, he needed to be found suitable by the parole board to be released. A major topic for the board: will you have a job when you get out?

So, how do you get a job while in prison?

https://twitter.com/FastCompany/status/1167393901159878657

Emile was incarcerated as a teenager. He had never had a job, or a job interview, before.

He did have:

- Access to college classes through the @PrisonUProject

- Connections with prison volunteers, and connections with other free people through his writing

A Twitter summary of my Foo Camp lightning talk “Mass decarceration: if you don’t hire people with felony convictions, who will?”: It was a 5-minute talk, so no time to review why the system needs to be dismantled beyond: it is racist, causes huge amounts of trauma, does a bad job of preventing violence, and prioritizes punishment over healing and restitution for people who have been harmed.

Sha’s story occurs within the context of a US criminal justice system that metes out a dubious, racist form of justice, is full of trauma, is ineffective at preventing violence, & does a terrible job of supporting healing & restitution for people who have been harmed. #PyCon2019 It’s a system that we have an obligation to confront and dismantle, and that the tech community has not historically engaged with at a level commensurate with the exceptional skills and resources we have to contribute to its transformation.

@pycon attendees: we've learned that, due to an unfortunate sequence of events, the recordings of Sha's and my keynotes have been lost. We're working with the team on a plan to re-record them. #PyCon2019 @pycon In the meantime, it's hard to translate Sha's personal story and intimate delivery into a set of tweets, but here's an attempt to summarize the context he gave us to then discuss concrete ways technologists can engage with the prison system: