From prisoner to escaping inner prisons (with Shaka Senghor)

Shaka, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me, Spence. I'm super excited to be here.

Yeah, great to have you here. Could you tell us a little bit about the events that led you to end up in prison for 19 years?

Yeah, you know, when I, when I think back on the time I spent in prison, a total of 19 years, seven of those years was in solitary. You know, I always have to go back to that moment and the moments prior to that. So I grew up in the city of Detroit. Grew up in a working class, you know, kind of slash middle class neighborhood. My dad was in the air force, also worked for the state. My mom was a homemaker. And unfortunately, you know, we were dealing with a tough household environment with abuse and things like that. I ran away when I was a kid. I was about 13, 14 years old. Got kind of seduced into the drug trade. And within the first few months of being within that culture, my childhood friend was murdered, I was robbed at gunpoint, I was beaten nearly to death. And sadly, I continued in that culture because like many kids, I just didn't know how to get out. And then when I was about 17 years old, I got shot multiple times standing on the corner of my block on the west side of Detroit at that time, processed through the hospital. They took two bullets out, left one bullet in that bullet. I still have to this to this day. And you know, I didn't, I didn't really understand as a kid back then what was happening inside of me. And so, you know, not, not no doctor, nurse, psychologist, therapist offered any understanding of the mental and psychological experience I just had. And so I just started to make up a narrative that before I allow someone to cause me harm again, and I found myself in conflict. I would shoot first and probably about 16 months or so later, I got into a conflict about 2 o' clock in the morning, you know, over a drug transaction I refused to make. And when that argument escalated, I turned to walk in the house and in a moment of poor decision, I just ended up turning around and fired multiple shots that tragically caused the man's death. I was subsequently arrested, charged with open murder, and sentenced to 17 to 40 years. And I ended up remaining there for 19 years. And seven of that, as I mentioned, was in solitary confinement.

That's obviously an incredibly tragic story for everyone involved, but I imagine it's not too atypical a story that a lot of violence actually is kind of similar to that where it's young men, someone acts impulsively. Would you agree with that?

I Think the complexity of violence, specifically inner city violence and violence associated with young boys, is such that we've tried to simplify it. And for a lot of us, at least, what I've learned over the time of spending a lot of time with young men who were convicted of violent crimes in that environment is that there are so many different causal factors, so many different origin stories as to how a person devolves into being violent toward other people. I think inherently, boys are just destructive. I mean, if you watch boys that play, you know, they're throwing things, breaking things. I mean, even our sports, you know, they're controlled violence. You know, I'm a big sports fan, but football is, like one of the most violent sports. And, you know, basketball is very physical. Boxing, mma, you name it. And so we enjoy that. There's an emotional payoff there. But when I. When I think about young men specifically who are acting out violently in community, you know, I think there are some deeper things that we just don't often talk about because it isn't simple.

What are some of the factors you think aren't discussed enough?

I think some of the factors that aren't discussed enough is childhood trauma. I mean, in recent times, there's been a lot of talk about adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACEs, environmental PTSD. I grew up in a tough city. I grew up in Detroit. Within my family, most people can't even comprehend this. But just in my family alone, I think there's about 10 of us who have been shot.

Wow.

And then I would. I would say the other part is narrative plays a key factor in why some of these things haven't been addressed, especially in the inner city. There's no world that I can imagine that if the same outcomes was happening in the surrounding suburbs where I grew up, that we wouldn't see that as a public crisis. Like, that would be like, a threat to everything that we say we stand for as a country. We just would never allow that. But because it typically happens to black and brown boys, that kind of narrative gets ignored and the causal factors gets ignored, and then we just jump from event to punishment as opposed to, like, hey, what if we actually understood what was happening? Maybe we can actually prevent some of these things.

Your point about childhood trauma is really interesting. Does that suggest that you think fear is often involved in these cases of violence, where they're being triggered through kind of fear that has risen through trauma?

I do think fear plays a role. I think anger, I think sadness, all things that we don't really oftentimes Associate emotionally with. With males. Like. Like. Like it was. I remember after I got shot, the next time I stood on the corner of my block, I was overwhelmed with this feeling of fear. Was just. A car was driving down the street, and I just felt my body, like, seize up, you know, and back then, at 17 years old, like, you don't even know the word anxiety. You know, you don't know the word ptsd. And so I just remember feeling embarrassed, Like I couldn't tell my friends that I didn't feel comfortable doing something we did all the time. You know, we stood around on the corner talking to sports, talking basketball, talking cars, talking girls, and I was no longer comfortable. So fear played a big role. But with that fear, there was also, like, sadness and shame. You know, I was ashamed that I had these feelings. You know, I was sad that I didn't feel normal in my neighborhood anymore. And I think that plays a role with a lot of violence. You know, at least, you know, the people I've spoken with over the years and juveniles, you know, whether it's young women, young men in prisons, you know, I talk to men and women, and you start to get down to the root causes, and it's so many similarities. And sometimes, like, you know, there's people who are violent in how they engage with other people that never go to prison, and they still have those same roots.

You know, it's probably hard to remember, but if you think back to that moment when you pulled the trigger, do you think that it was fear driving you or anger or. Yeah. What do you think was going through your head?

I think it was a mixture of both. I was. I was afraid that potentially something could physically could happen to me. Prior to that incident. Just like a half an hour early, I was DJing a party, and somebody got shot outside the party. And so there was already, like, a heightened awareness happening. And then it was just the anger of, like, you know, I'm talking to this guy who I had sold drugs to before, and I'm like, I don't want to do this transaction. He's pushing. I'm pushing back. So now we're arguing, escalating. And, you know, so there's a variety of things, but. But what I. What I always come back to is, like, that's the explanation, which is different from an excuse. I don't make any excuse for that decision I made tonight. It's a horrible decision. It's one of the things that I live with. You know, even though my sentence is long over, it's a Sentence that, you know that that's a lifelong sentence you serve when you take someone's life. And it's not something that I take lightly. It's one of the reasons that I do a lot of the work that I do inside juveniles and in inner cities is like, I never want a kid to live the rest of their life having to carry the weight of having caused this level of harm to a family, to a community. And so, you know, I, I always think about what was the root there, because that's the only way you could prevent these things from happening is if you actually understand why they happen. And for me, it was really going back of like, what was I really feeling? You know, I was. There was anger, there was, there was fear. Those things are real, right? They don't excuse the decision making, but they, they are an important part of the decision making. And, you know, I don't think a lot of times we are, we talk enough about that, you know, which is why I started writing about these issues and talking about them and even seeing how they apply in the world of business, which surprisingly can be just as volatile as the streets that I grew up in.

This brings up an interesting kind of dichotomy that people sometimes talk about, which is, on the one hand, people are responsible for their choices, right? If someone commits a crime, nobody made them do that crime. On the other hand, there are structural forces that we know are extremely linked to these kinds of actions, right? Like, you know, whether it's being growing up in a dangerous neighborhood or being abused or having certain friend circles where these things happen, et cetera. How do you think about that kind of trade off?

I think of the trade off as being completely dishonest. As a society, we tend to allow explanations in places that are familiar to us that we're connected to, and we tend to dismiss those same explanations when it's connected to somebody who we don't have an emotional connection to. And the reality is it's all those things right there, there are reasons. There are the personal decisions and accountability, which I always start with first. Like, even I was a kid, but nevertheless, I still had to be responsible for my actions. And it's one of the things I teach my son now is like accountability across everything that you do is something important to embrace early on. And if you're accountable to your life decisions, one, you'll think about them a lot differently. But I think if we want to get better, we have to get better at being honest. And, you know, honesty requires us to pause and really Reflect on the whole picture and not just a snapshot.

So what is society not being honest about?

I think when it comes to issues of, like, inner city violence, criminal justice, I think we aren't being honest that we bought into a narrative around labeling specifically black males as criminally oriented, almost as a default button, without taking into consideration all the environmental factors. I think that narrative is shifting now. When I look at the prison population, it looks very different than when I went in. I was just in a juvenile last week in Rhode island, and. And I promise you that the young men could have been, you know, juvenile representations of the United Nations. It was so diverse in terms of who was sitting on those seats. There were young white boys and young brown boys and young black boys. And then I went into the girls unit. There was only three young ladies. Two of them were in. In detention, so they couldn't come out. But I was talking to one young white lady. I mean, young, young white girl. And so it's. Now we're looking at these issues permeate areas outside of the inner city. We're looking at opioid addiction that is pervasive in the suburbs and fentanyl and these high arrest rates. That really is an American issue. It's not just like a African American issue. It's an American issue. And I don't think we've been honest about that for decades. I think the default has been, if we criminalize one community, we don't have to deal with it. But then when it starts to impact more communities, it was like, oh, wait a minute, we got to change some things. And so you're just seeing a narrative shift, but it's. It's super slow compared to how fast it shifted to the negative.

One thing I think about, and this is. This is a really difficult question, but if you look across society and you say, well, what do people blame violence on?

Right?

They'll point to a lot of different structural things, and they'll point to a lot of different things about individuals, et cetera. But it's really hard. I think everyone admits that this is multifactorial, right? There's no one thing that is the cause of violence. Some people focus more on poverty, others more on drugs. Some people focus on how violence begets violence. If you live in a violent area, you might be more likely to commit violence to defend yourself, but also just because that's what you know. Also some people blame it on a culture that might fetishize violence. You hear about maybe role models talking about violence, also police enforcement. If you had to sort of divvy up how much of the problem is coming from different forces, these that I mentioned, but also other ones. How would you kind of divvy up? What are the kind of your top three that you think if we could make a difference in those top three things that would really improve the situation?

I would say the number one thing I would start with is just like the, the violent trauma that kids experience. You know, when I was in prison, I used to lead a group called Houses of Healing, where I got a chance to work and facilitate this program around uprooting some of the emotional anchors that was kind of holding us back. And I, what I found was so consistent across the board with the men who were sitting in the room. Most of them, if not all, had high levels of early childhood violence. Being slapped, kicked, punched by a parent, an adult, a sibling, being bullied, being sexually abused, like introduced to sex at a very early age. So sexual trauma, I say those things are like high level factors. I would say second to that is environmental factors. Most of us knew someone who had been shot before we were 13 years old. That's mind blowing to think about. You know, I can go in my son's school now and ask the kids if, if any of their peers have been shot. I'm sure not one of them would raise their hands because they're growing up in a very different environment. Whereas I can go like Lily in a school in Detroit, Chicago, South Central LA, the Bronx, you know, any, you know, St. Louis, any of these areas, and you ask the kid the same question, almost all the hands go up.

So just to press on that a little bit. So knowing someone who's been shot, obviously that must be incredibly upsetting for a child. How do you see that as then causing violence? Is it that they feel like they have to defend themselves? Is it that they sort of can have role models among, you know, people who are violent or is some other effect?

I think it induces fear and it induces this idea that you have to protect yourself.

Yeah.

You know, and I think this is where I think the country has got it wrong, is that we don't, we don't spend time with people who actually have committed acts of violence, who can comprehensively and intellectually explain their life without it being, you know, excused away as them making an excuse. Right. Like I iterate over and over, like I'm not, I'm not making an excuse. Like I made that decision. What I'm saying is that the orientation within the culture that I came from was such that the reaction to fear was to carry a gun and to be in protective mode. And being in protective mode with the gun leads to being reactionary. And I've seen that play out over and over and over again. If you think about it, the reverse of it, right? Like when I. When I began to change my life, what I did is I just reversed the narratives, right? And I started thinking, like, okay, if my negative narrative led me down this path, what happens if I create a positive narrative? Right? And so if we want a kid to aspire toward success, one of the things we talk about is put them in an environment where success is the norm. Finding them a mentor, making sure that environmentally and socially, they're in an environment that begets success. It's no different with violence and crime. If you put kids in that environment, it doesn't mean that all of them are going to commit the crime, right? It doesn't mean that all of them are going to become violent. Some of them have the reverse. You know, they don't want to be that person, but it's the same thing. You can put those same kids in a successful environment. Doesn't mean everybody's going to be the CEO. So there is some personal agency there. There is some of those things that we have to take account for, but it has to be like a fuller, holistic story.

So the first thing you pointed to is trauma, especially trauma around violence. And the second, environmental violence that can beget violence. What's the third? If you had to pick one more factor you think is critical, I would.

Say if there was. If there is, I think poverty definitely plays a role in terms of esteem. And how do you feel about yourself? And, you know, do you feel you're worthy of different light outcomes? I think that plays, you know, an incredible important role. There's like, you know, again, if you just look at statistical data of who ends up in prison, poverty is as high up on the chart as lack of education, which is also, you know, I would almost put on, on par with poverty.

And what about the role of the police? You know, you talked about how you knew so many people that had been shot. And, you know, even earlier, I think you said earlier that night someone had been shot. What was the role of the police? Did people call the police? Did the police do anything? Did they. Were they arresting people?

I mean, inner city policing is some of the most complex work imaginable. There's the desire of a community to be safe. There's this urgency of the community to be safe. There's an element in the community that believes in no snitching. Somehow those things have got conflated to people believing that the entire community doesn't desire safety. But the community also desires respect. And they desire to be protected and respected in a way that honors their humanity as any other community. And so when I was growing up, you know, during that era, police were slow to response, with the exception of high levels of gun violence. If you want to get the police to come and address that somebody broke in your house, you just say, hey, somebody's over here with a gun and they're there. But if you just say somebody's stealing, they're not showing up for that. I think for a long time there's been a been, you know, at least in Detroit, there was an antagonistic relationship that developed. You know, it didn't start like that. When I was a kid, when I was, when I was first growing up, police come through the neighborhood, they were heroes. They would stop and, and talk to us and, you know, probably give us candy and let us pull the siren, etc. But then something happened during the crack cocaine era that was just different. You know, there was an implosion in our community and you started to see officers that weren't from the community, which I think is part of the problem is that if you, if you don't come from the inner city that you're tasked with policing, all you have is the narrative. So I would tell people this, right? Like, being from Detroit, I would have people like always say to me, oh my God, like, this is such a tough city, right? And like, it is a city of grit. Like, this is a hard working, blue collar city. But then I would take people to Detroit and they don't want to leave. They're like, man, this is like the warmest, funnest these people party. You meet a person in the store, you feel like you've known them all your life. Because it's just a warmth of Midwestern culture, right? But if you only have the narrative that we're bad and you don't come from that community, you're going to come in with anger, you're going to come in with paranoia, you're going to come in closed off because you're probably afraid, you know, like, if I wasn't from Detroit, I would be afraid to go there. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm just, honestly, I would be like, oh, yeah, I'm probably not going there, right? But being from there, I'm like, oh, this is the this is one of the funnest places to experience life. And so I think it's, you know, part of it is we don't spend time with like making sure that there is a connection to people who serve the community. And that serving the community goes beyond arresting people in the community. It means actually connecting with people in a real way. And the officers that do it really well, and I know some of them are those officers that really connect with the people in the community, you know, and so, you know, even, even with, with, with the policing narrative, like I don't think all police are bad. In fact, I know that to be completely far from the truth. I think the system of policing is, is terrible, you know, which is different from the individual. And I think a lot of times we don't separate those two. But you know, I think there's, I think there's so many factors that they play in fostering violence. When you can ignore the small things or you're coming in with an idea that these people life outcomes aren't going to be good anyway. So why don't I only come when it's to pick up the bodies and arrest people versus like, can I use my professionalism to come in and create real conversations?

I think that many people assume that those living in poorer, more violent neighborhoods would want fewer police. But what I understand looking at surveys is that often people in those neighborhoods don't want fewer police. They want police to behave differently. Would you say that that's true as well?

Absolutely. I think that's the thing that I've seen in Detroit, is that, you know, when you have police that behave differently, the community welcomes that. They're excited to have someone come in who is really thinking about the holistic well being of the community. And they're not only showing up when something is wrong, but they can actually show up and you know, spend times with, with, with the kids in the community and, and talk about what does policing actually mean beyond just capturing the bad guy. So yeah, I think different behaviors produces different outcomes for everybody involved.

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Going back to your personal story, could you tell us about when you first arrived in prison? What was that experience like that first day being in prison and what was it like in prison?

People ask me that question a lot, like, what is prison like? And you know, it's a perpetual nightmare. It is all the things that you can imagine that you've heard about that are wrong. That is what prison is. The violence is real, but it's also a complex system because it is many different security levels. So when I started off, I started off at high security level, I was in close custody and it's very violent environment. I went to a prison called the Mystic Reformatory, also known as the Gladiator school, where, you know, stabbings, bludgeoning, spites were happening Lily every day. And it's depressed environment where people have given up on life and they don't think they're ever getting out of prison. And so, you know, I walked into that with those same feelings. You know, I was a kid, I'm like, I walked in angry and, and bitter and, you know, one of those things that, you know, something I wouldn't wish on anybody. I would never want anybody to go and suffer in that way. I would say I was fortunate. You know, I met some incredible mentors in that environment. Men who were serving life sentences. You know, they guided me to books, they challenged me, you know, but it was brutal. You know, it's brutal and it's the most heartbreaking thing to squander your life and to wake up every day knowing that you've thrown it all away, you know, and that you're now you're stuck and you're trapped in this volatile, hopeless, dark and desperate environment. And if you're going to scratch your way out of it, you know, you're gonna have to find some hope and light. And I was fortunate to do that.

When you first arrived, did you have to join a group in order to feel safe? Because that's something that I've heard about.

No, when you, you know, every prison system Is different, right? So, like, I live in California now, and I've spent time doing reentry work with California prisons. A very different culture. It's very divided around racial lines, gang lines. I mean, in a way, that's so stark, that is almost unbelievable. You walk into the prison yard and there's clearly, like, whites over here, Southern Mexicans over here, Northern Mexicans over here, blacks over here. You know, it's very, very stark. Michigan was different. You know, it was more oriented around, you know, your city and then your neighborhood and then, you know, you know, people have different religious beliefs, but the overall orientation in Michigan was more about geography. Like, if you're from Detroit, Detroit guys tend to connect quicker. If you're from Flint, Michigan, or Saginaw, like, those guys tend to jail. And then from there, it kind of spins out into common interest and, you know, things of that nature. But it wasn't a matter of. Of choosing. It's almost like I went to prison. I had friends who were in prison. You know, I have friends from different neighborhoods. So it's. It's more like, you know, looking for your friends who you haven't seen in a couple of years because they've been serving time. But it varies all over the country. Know what a lot of people don't realize about America is we have over 50 different prison systems. Every state is different. And then a federal prison system is different from all the state prison systems. So some are more focused on rehabilitation, some are more focused on punishment. Is drastically different. You know, is. I mean, it's incredible to see the differences. I've been in a lot of prisons across the country.

When you were early on there, what was your typical day like?

Early on, I went to school. I had already had, like, a GED when I went in, so I went to college.

You were able to do that in the prison?

Yeah, before they took the Pell Grants out. So, like, around 94, the Clinton administration passed the crime bill, and it took it. It stripped out all of the college education, But I was averaging a 4.0 in college. Worked, you know, I worked in different spaces in the prison. I worked in the kitchen. I worked in recreation center.

Is that mandatory, or is that something you opt into and do you get paid for that?

No work is mandatory. So what a lot of people don't realize is that the 13th Amendment, which was the amendment that abolished slavery, created a loophole to reintroduce a new form of slavery, which is known as our prison system. So if you go to prison, you can be Forced to work for free. And there's nothing constitutionally that you can do to fight that battle because of the 13th amendment allowed for cheap or free labor. So everybody who goes to prison has to work unless you're incapable of working.

That's a bizarre, very bizarre system. And who benefits from that work? Like the prison benefits.

The prison benefits. The private companies that use cheap prison labor, they benefit.

So the President will actually contract out with companies who are then using prison labor. But that's sort of essentially unpaid labor.

Yeah, or super cheap labor. So, you know, instead of paying a worker in society, you know, minimum wage or working wage, they would pay people in prison a dollar a day, you know, if that depending on what the, what the company was. And so that's one of the reasons that there was such an explosion in our prison population, because of cheap and free labor and these deprivatization of prisons. Like, you know, it's really unbelievable when you think about what happened with the explosion of the prison population where we went from at one point, you know, 100,000 to, you know, maybe 200,000 to over 2 million people in prison. Like we have more people in prison than almost all of the countries combined is how many people we've had in prison. And this is a statistic that a lot of people aren't aware of about, I would say around about 150 or so Americans have someone they know, love, or were close to who have been or are in prison. Like that's how pervasive, like our judicial system is, is that no one is untouched by this reality at this point.

Yeah, it's shocking. How did you end up getting into solitaire? And what, what is solitaire really? Like, people hear about, you know, solitary confinement.

The solitary confinement is 23 hour lockdown and what I would assume is probably about the size of most of your viewers bathroom. And I would say not even the full bathroom, but more like their powder room. So imagine being in there for 23 hours a day, five days a week, and 24 hours a day the other two days. And that's where you get your food delivered to, you know, that's your world for every day.

And during those extra, you know, one hour a day, what are you doing then?

So they take you out to these recreation cages, which is the equivalent of a dog kennel. So just imagine a dog kennel run where there's like eight cages on one side, eight on the other. And except instead of dogs, there's humans. And so they take you out, they handcuff you, the handcuffs are attached to a, literally a dog leash. And they walk you out and put you in these kennels for an hour a day, for five days a week, because that's the minimum requirement. And then the rest of the time you're in the most chaotic environment imaginable. I mean, like the level of mental health challenges that people are suffering from, the psychological damage that that environment caused. And it exacerbates for those who are already dealing with those issues. I mean, it's extremely loud. People are beating on their cell doors, they're slamming their foot lockers shut, they're flooding the tear, they're. They're throwing feces on each other.

So, so you're a lot, you're separated from them, but you can all like kind of hear each other.

You can hear each other. I mean, you're, you're behind a steel door. And most of the modern prisons, you're behind a steel door. But there's, you know, like, we would communicate by laying on the floor, talking under the door, or talking through the crack of the door. You know, sometimes we would pop our electrical sockets out and then you could talk to the person downstairs or next door to you. So, you know, we figure out how to communicate. Cause it's the most human thing is to be social and we figure out how to make connection in that environment. But you know how I ended up there? I was there three different occasions. One time, like a year and year and a half for a fight. You know, the second time I threw some mashed potatoes on this guy who was being disrespectful. I slapped him with a tray of mashed potatoes, just to clarify that.

So you had a year in solitaire for hitting a guy with a tray?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They labeled that as an assault.

Was he injured or. He was fine.

I mean, I think his ego probably was injured more than one of them physically being injured. Like he wasn't like any extensive damage. He was being like super disrespectful. And I responded to his disrespect with kind of like the rules of the yard at the time. You know, I was at that stage of my, in my incarceration. I was, I was in this bitter, anger, volatile, confrontational stage where anything was a reason to get into a dust up. And that was. That hurt, right? That, that hurt as a, a broken teenager who was disgusted with his life outcomes, who didn't want to be responsible or accountable. And then the last time I was in solitary, I was a assault on an officer and that led to me being there for four and a half years, which was also, you know, the space where, you know, I made a decision in that environment that was rooted in this realization. At that time, I didn't know if I was ever getting out of prison, and I didn't know if I was even getting out of solitary confinement, because the man across the hall from me, he had been in solitary for 20 years. My neighbor had been in solitary for 10 years. And there was other guys on the cell block I didn't know who had been in for any number of years in between that. I got to a place where I didn't want to die, with my only legacy being that I was this violent kid who ended up in prison. And that was it. Like, I didn't even. You know, it's so interesting. Like, I thought of myself so differently until I started journaling. Like, I thought things just happened to me. You know, this is my bad luck. You know, this just happened to me. But in that environment, I started doing some deep, deep, like, soul work, and it changed my life.

The incident that got you into prison in the first place, how did you view that in your early years in prison?

In my early years, I was still angry that the man that I initially got into the argument with had brought two other men with him to my house. I was angry that he continue to pursue the drug deal, even though I was adamant that I didn't want to make the deal. And so for years, my. My orientation was around being angry at him and blaming him for the cause of his friend's death, as opposed to accepting responsibility for the decisions I made that night. And that is also why I lived in that cloud of anger, because the anger was a defense mechanism against the truth. And it's something I found, you know, ironically, I found in corporate America, is that oftentimes the idea of being a tough leader or being an angry leader known for anger, and, you know, all these outbursts are really the same kind of mask that we wear to hide from the things that exist beneath that. And so when I was in solitary, I started with this essential question, and it was based on. I got into reading philosophy. It was based on reading Plato's Republic. And I had come across the apology. And Socrates said, the unexamined life isn't worth living. And I remember, like, initially not even understanding what the heck he was talking about. You know, philosophy was not like my first native language. It was, like, something that I learned to appreciate over time. But I just kept coming back to that, like, what does that mean? And then when it finally struck me, what it meant was that I had not really examined my life. And so I started with this essential question of, like, how did I go from this honor roll scholarship kid with dreams of being a doctor and an artist to serving out my most promising years in prison? And that led to me starting to journal and really unearth all the things that had happened to me. What it also did is it forced me to be accountable for the harms I had caused, and it forced me to be accountable for the devastation and the hurt of that night in particular. And that was one of the most liberating things was, was accountability freed me up to actually say, you know, that was all me. You know, it didn't matter what that person done. You know, I still had the power to walk away. And I didn't take that. I didn't, I didn't choose that power. I chose something different. And I have to be as responsible and accountable for that. And if I can, if I can lean into being responsible and accountable, I can make a difference in the world to where other young men growing up like me, they don't have to make that degree of a poor decision to where they have to suffer for the rest of their life with that hanging over their head.

So it sounds like your emotions of anger, for example, were self protective in a way of, you know, not, you know, preventing you from taking responsibility. But I wonder, once you started to take responsibility, did you experience a lot of self loathing? Was that, you know, what was that like?

Yeah, I mean, you know, the anger was a protective shield. And I think, you know, for years after prison, I ran from even being angry. I was like, I was too afraid to be angry because, you know, when I had been angry before, there's bad outcomes. But, you know, as that, as that, as I began to peel back those layers, there was a lot of shame. You know, I was really ashamed of the fact that I caused so much harm. I was ashamed that I had my life outcomes had led to me being in the most wretched of places. You know, I went through this, this grieving process of knowing that I had given up agency over my, over my own life. And so there was some self loathing there. But as I began to peel back those layers, one of the things that I did that, and I talk about this in my new book, which I think people are really going to benefit from.

So that's how to be Free, right?

Yeah. How to Be Free. What I did was what I call active journaling where I had to be so intentional with how I started journaling. And my agreement with myself was this. Only sit down and pick up a pen and paper when you are ready to be completely honest. This is going to hurt. This is going to make you feel ashamed. It's going to cause you to be angry again. But you can only get to the other side if you're willing to be truthful and honest. That active approach to journaling, it was so raw. Know the stories that I had to unearth, the things I had to write about. And then the other part of that was that I had to go back and read it every few days. And like, when I would go back and read it, like, sometime it was like reading the thoughts of a mad person. Because I would write, I would journal when I was angry, I would journal when I was disappointed, I would journal when I was happy. And so I was all over the place. You know, I would go back and read it and be like, you went through five different stages of development in one day. But I attribute it to the success I have today. I attribute it to the freedom that I have today and to the work that I'm blessed to be able to do in the world.

Obviously, when someone does something that causes a lot of harm, people feel that the person should feel shame for some amount of time. But eventually, I think most people would say they want the person to move past that. What do you think is the right way to think about that? Like, what is the right relationship to have to a mistake like that?

I think the right relationship to have for the individual is to recognize that not everybody's going to agree with you. Taking responsibility for your life, taking ownership, putting in the work to turn it around. You're still going to have your detractors. You're still going to have people that's going to say, I don't know if I trust this guy. There's going to be people that say, I don't think this person has been punished long enough. They should. They should suffer more. There's people that's going to say that I don't think this person is deserving of success. And all those things are okay. Like, you just have to be okay with people having a different opinion than you have about yourself. What I would say is, as a social construct is that 90% of people, over 90 of people, will get out of prison at some point. And then we have to decide, are we letting them back into the tribe or not. You know, I had a. Recently, I put in for a Pardon. And I was doing an interview, I was in conversation with Oprah Winfrey, and she asked me why at this stage of my life was a pardon so important and what would that mean to me. And I had to think long and hard about it because I had avoided putting it in for so long. And. And then I realized that there was part of me that yearned to be part of the tribe of citizenship and that I was tired of when I go and need to do something and the felony comes up, and I got to write that in, I got to explain to people what that is. Despite the fact that I've been out of prison for 15 years and have accomplished more than 15 years than most people would probably accomplish in multiple lifetimes. And I still have to go back to my worst moment over and over and over to satiate this kind of thirst, repetitive punishment that we have as a society. And so what I. What I think is that the person has to reconcile that within themselves that there's always going to be someone who does not agree with. With you moving on with your life. I mean, I've had it happen with lovers. I've been, you know, I've been in the midst of an argument, and you're nothing but a murderer, and you'll never amount to anything other than that. Right. You know, I've had it in workspaces, you know, where people have. Have used that against me when it comes to how they decide a thing. Right. And those are things I just have to. I've had to just deal with as a human being, you know, I have to patch myself up and, you know, and I don't. I don't sit back feeling sorry for myself. I definitely have empathy and compassion for my experience. But I've learned that letting go of the shame, which is, you know, again, is one of the things I write about, is so liberating, you know, it's so liberating and it happens. Like, I mean, you have to think about, you know, I worked in corporate. I was at a company called Navon for three years, and I worked with the sales team. I worked across with the executive, the seat I was in the C suite. So probably one of the only people to go from a cell block to a C suite position. And I can't tell you how many times in meetings somebody would be like, you really killed it, you know, and like, what that instantaneously would trigger inside of me. Right? It's like they don't know. They don't know what that word means to me. And so you're all always reconciling these things. You know, watching the local news, you know, you see somebody, loved one who's been murdered almost every day if you watch the news. And it's heartbreaking because it triggers that thing of like, man. And then having gone through it myself, you know, with, with navigating grief and guilt when my own brother was murdered, you know, to July, literally yesterday was the anniversary of his. Of his murder, July 9, 2021. And trying to grieve while feeling guilty that I made somebody's family feel like my family was feeling and like having to reconcile those feelings and then go back to work when my, when my bereavement leave was, was, was up. So, you know, these are things that we're constantly reconciling.

One kind of mindset that I think of as being helpful with regard to mistakes is thinking, how do I become the sort of person that wouldn't make this mistake again? And that, that can give your. That can be a way to then give yourself permission to forgive yourself. Because you say, well, I am not the person who would do that anymore in that same scenario. I would not do that now. And I'm wondering, how do you think about self forgiveness?

Yeah, I think for me, I think it's. It's a little bit different because I don't. I don't see what I did as a mistake. I see it as a poor decision that I made in the midst of hurt, heartbreak, paranoia, ptsd. And as I began to heal those parts of me, like, I knew there was no world that I would make that same decision again. And I do think that is important is to reconcile, like, okay, am I the person that in the midst of an argument would take someone's life? And I know that the answer to that is absolutely no. And I think that's true for a lot of people who have been in my situation. Like, you know, people who have committed serious violent crimes are, you know, have the lowest recidivism rates of anybody. They're least likely to reoffend and definitely least likely to reoffend in such a serious way. So I knew that that was something that I would not do again. But it was, it was. I had to recognize that I didn't make a mistake, that I made a poor decision, because that distinction for me was really, really important.

How do you define that distinction? Like, what's the difference to you?

Well, the distinction is that, you know, to me, a mistake is that I accidentally bumped into somebody or I tripped and failed and the gun Went off. The decision was that I pulled the trigger in a midst of anger, fear, and paranoia, knowing that there are some serious outcomes that happen as a result of shooting at somebody or shooting someone. And so that was a poor decision that I made.

So how do you get to that point of self forgiveness? Because it sounds like for you, it's not enough to just no longer be the person that would make that decision, that there's some other component of getting to the point where you can forgive yourself.

Yeah, I mean, like, like self forgiveness is. It's a real journey. You know, it's probably one of the hardest journeys that any of us will ever go on. And I mean that. Like, I've seen it with people who have had to reconcile harm they've caused in the workplace and where they beat up on themselves over and over and over again because we replay that narrative in our minds. And so I. I had to decide that I got to disrupt this tape at some point. You know, I got to. I got to push the stop. But I can't just keep pushing the pause button. I got to push the stop button. And that required me to affirm the things that I was actually doing. Right. So affirmation is a big part of that, that healing journey. It really required me to step up in a way to say, hey, you're not your worst moment. You know, you've had so many incredibly meaningful, impactful moments. And so that's stuff that I'm constantly doing. It doesn't just happen overnight. It's just part of the lifelong journey.

So it sounds like part of it is not letting that moment define your whole life and being able to acknowledge the good things you. You're doing and have done.

Absolutely. And it's really being accountable for that moment, you know, because you can do a whole bunch of things that are good, but you also have to be accountable for that moment.

Going back to your experience in solitary confinement, people describe it as sort of a hell. Right. Like, you don't have access to other people, there's nothing to do. You're just kind of sitting alone. And many people feel that not only is it cruel, but that it's maybe psychologically damaging to the people there. And then when they come out, they may be much worse off. And so could you just tell us about what, in your experience were the psychological effects of being there?

I mean, there's a book I read that I think helped me survive solitary confinement. It's a book called Cages of Steel. And in the book, there's a psychiatrist that Talks about the damage that is caused by isolating people. And that damage is such that one, it disrupts how you normally communicate. So in order to talk to people in solitary, you have to lay on the floor, holler up under the cell door, and now you're hollering across 30 other guys trying to do the same thing, right? You know, it desensitizes you to human touch because you haven't been touched by another human being. You know, it plays like, like you start to hallucinate when you're in an environment you can't put your feet on solid ground. You know, I tell people now, especially, you know, having gone through this pandemic when I had so many people reaching out to me who were struggling with feeling isolated in their own homes. You know, now imagine that times a thousand, that sense of like being isolated and like those feelings were something that is so destabilizing, you know, it makes you question like your own well being. And then when you're dealing with so many people around you who are losing it, you start to ask yourself, am I the one that's actually crazy? Because I'm not losing it. So there was just tons of things that I had to reconcile all the time. And you know, journaling helped me do that. Being literate, you know, the average reading grade level in prison is third grade. So I was so fortunate just to be literate. So I can read books. And whenever I felt myself slipping, I would just pick up a book, a random book, open up a page. You know, usually it was somebody who had overcome adversity. You know, Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X. I would pick up these kind of books that would just like help me get through that moment. And once I got through the moment, I knew I would be fine. But it was tough. It was like a constant work of reconciling that.

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I believe it was in one of your interviews you talked about learning to reframe your prison cell. To think about it differently. Could you describe that?

Yeah, I went from, like, letting it be a torture chamber to turning it into my own university. And so every day I would structure my days as if I was off, you know, at the University of Michigan or Harvard or Howard or, you know, Morehouse or one of these colleges. And I would study, every hour I would study a different subject. You know, I would study philosophy, I would study world history, I would study, you know, psychology, I would study language. And, you know, I would read the dictionary for an hour and study the etymology of words. And having that structure helped me, like, maximize my time and utilize it productively. And then once I began writing, I would still had that same approach where I would study during the day, and then I would write throughout the evening. And then once they cut the power off, I would just stand by my door and that little sliver of light that would come through, I would just use that to write by.

That is, you know, truly inspiring, being in such an incredibly difficult situation and still finding a way to structure your life and, and make it something positive. Right?

Yeah. And I think, you know, it's one of the things, like now it's so interesting to me, like, like my, my, my hometown football team, Detroit Lions, their slogan is all about grit. And, you know, you see that word in so many different business settings where people are talking about grit, resilience. And I think those things are, like, really important. But a lot of times I don't think people really understand, like, what does, what does that really mean? What does it really require of a person beyond just a catchy slogan on a T shirt or a coffee mug or in an all hands meeting or a sales meeting? And what I, what I realized for me is that one, I think we're all resilient as human beings. I think that's inherently encoded in our DNA. I don't think we're always conscious of it, which is the difference between somebody who seems really resilient and somebody who seems weak. When you're conscious of it, how you get to grit, resiliency and fortitude is really by being vulnerable. And like that, that ability to be vulnerable with yourself, to say, listen, I did. I don't know, I'm uncertain. I don't feel my best today allows you to actually figure out how to get to your best. It actually allows you to figure out how to know the things that you don't know. And like, you know, for me in that environment, I made a choice like, like solitary is meant to break you. You know, it's meant to destroy. Like there's nothing in that environment that's designed to help you. I hit the lottery. I hit the literacy lottery. I was literate. And so that didn't allow me to sit and wallow in self pity. It challenged me to get real with myself. And when I got real with myself, I had a decision. There's a rap line that's one of my favorites where Jay Z says, I ran past the fork in the road and went straight. And it's in reference to the Robert Frost poem, which I love and hate. You know, I love it cause I thought it was just brilliantly written, but I hate it because it offers only two solutions. And for me there's always this third option of like, you create your reality. And so for me that vulnerability was like, I don't know anybody who went down this path that I'm about to go down. I don't know too many people who have been in solitary and had the audacity to dream big. You know, I don't know too many people who have been in an environment that was designed to destroy them and then they found enlightenment. So I'm going to have to carve a new path by being completely vulnerable and honest with myself. One of the things that I learned in that journey was that I had never completed anything. And I knew in that moment when I realized that, that if I was going to turn my life around, I had to finish at least one thing. And like that I could only have got there if I was willing to be real with myself. And I think that's what grit is, Grit is vulnerability. Turn to action. And like I see it again like all the time in corporate, when I work with companies on their company culture, when I work with sales team on how to overcome objections, is that a lot of people aren't willing to get real with their sales because they, they just want the outcome. You know, you join a sales team and the company has a great product, you're like, okay, I just want to join this team and ride the rocket. But if you want to become great at sales, you got to become great at knowing what you don't know. And that requires a level of vulnerability that May say, you know what? I'm not the best storyteller, so maybe I'm not the best salesperson yet. But if I can develop these skills, I can become one of the best in the world. And so that's what to me. Grit, resilience. All stars with vulnerability.

Most people won't defend solitary confinement. They think it's terrible. But those that do defend it, they'll say, well, you know, what are you supposed to do? If someone's violent in prison, you've got to protect the other prisoners from them. If someone's committing crimes in prison, you've got to stop them. What do you think should happen instead of solitary?

I think anytime that there's an act of violence, obviously you got to separate people. You got to isolate them from the incident. Typically, if it's a conflict, it's usually between two people. It's not usually between the person and overall prison system. Right. So I do think separation is important. But what I think about is prevention before punishment. How are we treating people when they first come to prison? Like, I believe that as a society, if we're going to incarcerate people from the moment that they're arrested, we should be figuring out what are the tools that they need to readjust to being able to play nicely with the rest of society. And if you're doing that, you'll find that you don't have a need for solitary confinement. But let's say, since we do have it, what should we be doing? We should be doing that exact thing that if we're going to put people in isolation, we should ensure that they have the tools to readjust as opposed to punishing them indeterminately. Like, we shouldn't be stuffing people into these environments where it's going to make them worse. Like, you know, and obviously humans aren't dogs, Right? But if you think about this, like any dog trainer would tell you, if you want to leave your dog at home, what you can't do is leave your dog in the cage all day and then let the dog out and then walk out the house. Because what you're going to come back to is the dog is going to be completely destroyed. Your couch ate up, the walls, the trash, you name it, they're going to tear it up. Because there's an anxiety that is induced by being held in captivity. What you do as a dog owner is you take your dog out and you walk them and you spend time in nature and you let them play and you let them disperse that energy in a healthy way. They can leave. Leave them at home. You can't stuff a human in a cage in an environment that is barbaric, dehumanizing and inhumane and then decide that after five years they're probably able to play nicely. Like, nothing changed with me between year one and year four and a half. Like nothing. Nothing changed with me that the system did. Right. Like, my environment was the same, all the chaos. So they didn't even know if I was going to get out and play nicely. Only person knew that was me because I had done all the internal work. So what I would say is that we have to put structures in place to ensure that when we're isolating people, we're not ice, we're isolating them from the problem. We're not isolating them from their humanity. And that we're making sure that they have the tools to recalibrate. They have the counseling, the support, the mentoring. Whatever we need to do to make sure that they're able to be engaged with other people, we should be doing it then. Here's a fact about prison, solitary confinement that people don't know is most of the people who are in solitary aren't there because they've committed biting acts toward others. They're there for other ridiculous breaking of rules that oftentimes is associated with their psychological orientation. Like if somebody is. If somebody is a schizophrenic, the likelihood of them following all the rules of prison is minimum to none. So you put them in solitary for something that's really. They need treatment for, not further isolation.

Because the prison treats it like a punishment. Like, you break the rules, this is the consequence.

Absolutely.

Obviously, you've come an incredible way since you were a young man. Do you think that everyone has the potential or are some people actually irredeemable? You know, you hear about serial killers who just kill people in cold blood and seem to enjoy inflicting suffering, or people that have such a twisted ideology that it seems like they just are always going to hurt people if they're let free. Do you believe that there are people like that that are irredeemable? And how do you think we should deal with them in society?

I get asked this question a lot, and I think part of it is that we have to separate people who are psychologically damaged. Any psychological help? I actually served time with a. With a serial killer.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. This guy named John Norman is in Michigan. He's like. I think he was accused of killing, like, eight people. Eight. Eight young ladies. And I remember meeting this guy and he worked in a law library at the time, or he spent a lot of time in the law library. He is a brilliant legal mind. And he's also clearly was a psychopath. And so do I think he's redeemable. I think that there's a structure you can put in place where it doesn't give him access to kill again. And he also still had things about him that was of value to people in that environment. Do I think he should be just let out of prison to play freely amongst people in society? No, because I think there's a psychological thing that I don't think that's like, I don't think that's just like a crime, you know, And I think there's a difference between, hey, you're out hustling, trying to provide for yourself and actually like you have a pathology around killing other people. I think that's a psychological issue. And I think that what we've done is we've kind of intertwined the two and try to use them as one argument. And that's just not, it's not true. I mean, I was in prison with Dr. Kevorkian and you know, I remember thinking to myself, like, why is this guy in a prison cell block? Right. Like, I understood like what they charged him with and you know, the assisted suicides. But I was like, the prison system didn't seem like the right place for somebody like him, you know, and so it's those type of things where I think we. There's no easy answers. You know, like, I'm not a psychologist. I do have social awareness. To know that most of the people who I've met in prison are redeemable and the others are people who have psychological problems, that's beyond, you know, my level of expertise. But I don't think that the majority of people are inherently evil. And I have met people who are inherently evil. And it's clear that there's a psychological disconnect there that has nothing to do with criminal orientation that we should be thinking about differently.

But it sounds like you think that that is actually a minority of people who commit violent crimes are actually of that psychological profile. Most of them. They actually could be reformed.

Absolutely.

One thing you talk about in your work is masculinity. How do you think that that feeds into violent crime and the issues in our society?

I think a couple of things. I think one, we've over indexed on the idea that all testosterone driven behavior is somehow toxic. And it's, it's literally what I, what I talked about. Early on, I talked about sports. Like, I think I'm like, I'm a gentle parent. You know, my son comes up to me and. And he loves to cuddle and he loves to have hugs. And then I also love UFC because I like to see people, like, battling and figuring out, you know, their. Their inner toughness. Right? And so I think this idea that everything that's rooted in violence is. Is a reaction to masculinity or distorted distortion of masculinity, I think it's wrong. You know, there. There's women I know who have been and are as violent as men, and it has nothing to do with their. Them being masculine. It has to do with them being hurt and traumatized and, and defensive. And then I just think. I think as a culture, human beings are. Are really violent. Like, like. Like you watch kids at play, like they're hitting each other, like, when they don't get that toy, like that. That's a real thing. Like, it's not. You know, and then our entertainment, like, if you look at the entertainment that we enjoy as a culture, sports. Sports are like, extremely violent. You know, I. I don't think. I don't even think we have an appreciation for how violent it is for a person to run full speed and smack into another person. I don't think people understand how skillfully violent, like, boxing or MMA is and how people enjoy that. Like, that's just. That's just the facts, right? But then you look at the movies, we watch the action movies, extremely violent horror movies, extremely violent gangster movies, like, you name it, we love it, right? I think it's the lack of control violence that we have a problem with. I don't think that that's just a masculine thing. I think it's a human thing. And I think that, you know, the solve there is to ensure that people have safety, you know, growing up and that whenever they encounter unsafety, that we are creating spaces for those things to be addressed in a real way. And a lot of this stuff happens. You know, most of the guys that I serve time with, they all did time in juvenile. They all did time in these broken school systems. So there's a. There's a correlation where all these things actually work together.

I think one of the more interesting ideas that Freud talked about is the idea of sublimation, where you take some impulse that can be dangerous or nasty or harmful, and you redirect it into something that's socially acceptable and beneficial. I think there's a view that violence is inherently bad, and then there's another view that says, well, no, humans have. Many humans, not all humans. Many humans have an inherent violent impulse. And yes, if they're harming a stranger, that's obviously terrible, but if they're doing it for sport, under controlled conditions, safely, and everyone's enjoying it, it's not only fine, it's actually a positive sublimation of that violent impulse. Right, and so maybe that's what you're getting at.

Yeah, I mean, you think about the gladiators in the coliseum, know where they were tasked with going to war and waging war. That's what our boxing rings are. You know, that's what. That's what the octagon is for. Mma, you know, that's what our football fields are. You know, rugby, you name it. You know, there. There. There is that energetic output. You know, even. Even sports that don't seem like they have a violent component to them. You know, you think about the force that's required to hit a tennis ball 100 miles per hour, like, that's a serious energetic output. Right. And I do think it's that thing of, like, what's not control that causes harm is a. Is a different. Different thing. But we also have to be, you know, honest as a society in terms of, like, the things we find enjoyable about it.

It reminds me of cats, because most play with cats is essentially them trying to murder or something, Right? It's like. Except that they're trying to murder the toy or the laser pointer, right?

Yeah.

And it's like, nobody would be like, oh, it's bad to play with cats. It's like, no, that is what evolution makes cats enjoy. So that's what evolution makes cats enjoy. And I think there's something similar with humans. We have. Many of us have a violent impulse, and that is just part of our nature. And it's like, how do we use that violent. Violent impulse in ways that are healthy and good rather than harmful? Before we wrap up, the last thing I wanted to ask you about is reintegration. Right? So you got out of prison. You were there for 19 years. They're like, okay, you're free now. I imagine that must be just incredibly strange and shocking to be. To come back to the regular world.

I mean, coming back to society, you know, it was 2010, June 22nd, specifically, one day after my 38th birthday, I was released. And, you know, it was a mixture. I came out, I was super excited. You know, I was like. I was literally like a kid. I was so naive about life on this side. I Didn't realize until later I had arrested development. You know, like, I stopped developing socially probably from the moment I was arresting. So I was arrested. So I probably was like, you know, I was 38, biologically, but I probably was more like in my early 20s when I first got out, in terms of my orientation to the world, technology had advanced beyond what was imaginable. Like, I grew up with, like, Fred Flintstone and the Jetsons, and it was like Fred Flintstone had been transported into an episode of the Jetsons when I got out.

Right. Cause there were no. You came out to a world of, like, Internet and smartphones, which had not existed.

Yeah, they didn't exist before I went in. I mean, like, even now, the car technology. I remember as a kid watching Knight Rider and David Hasselhoff talking to his car kit. Like, that was like a big thing. Was like, wow, this car can talk to him. Like, now all cars can talk to you, you know, so it's fascinating to think about coming out and having to make that adjustment. And it's one of the things I talk about, because it is overwhelming. You know, I can't tell you how many. How many people that I noticed got out of prison, that they. They reach out to me and they're struggling. You know, they're struggling to just operate their phone, you know, they're overwhelmed, you know, And I always tell them, I was like, listen, if you got a niece, a nephew, a godchild, a grandchild, like, let them be your mentor. They'll help you. But it's scary to think that as an adult, you're coming out to this new world and nobody's thinking about that your life stopped for however long you were gone. You know, the things that we take for granted, like, we're gradually able to grow with these things, whereas somebody who's coming out, you're just dropped into this new world. You know, you're dropped into AI now, and you've been gone for 20 years where none of this stuff existed. So that was tough, you know, But I think I came home with so much optimism that I even saw the challenges as opportunities to learn. And I found joy in most of them. You know, there was definitely times I felt overwhelmed. I felt grossly insecure. I felt like I was so far behind everybody else. You know, that was scary to think about. You know, I don't have the opportunity to work for 20 years and retire, but I had a game plan. You know, I had planned my life. I knew that I wanted to come home and be entrepreneur, and I Knew I wanted to come home and be successful as an author. And so I got out and I just hustled books out of the trunk of my car. You know, I sold books everywhere. I found people and, you know, I just kept doing that. And, you know, I did a lot of social impact work, which I knew was going to be super important for me. You know, mentoring young people in my community, like, all the things that I knew were important to me, I was just like, you know, I'm going to do them. And I did all this stuff with no budget. You know, I went to schools, I volunteered to go talk to the kids. Sometimes I wasn't even supposed to be let in the schools because I have a felony. But the principals and deans, they saw value in what I did. But it's been a fascinating journey, man, 15 years later, you know, I've accomplished so much in this 15 years. I've had so many experiences. You know, it literally is the stuff that movies are made of. But it's been an incredible journey.

Yeah, that is. It's hard to even fathom coming out into the world. And, like, you haven't talked, you haven't seen your friends in 20 years, and you haven't interacted with technology, and now you have to get a job, and then you have a fellow, you know, you've got. You're a felon. And so you have to. I mean, you have to essentially have to report that, right? Like, people can find that out.

Yeah, no, you have to report. You have to report your felony in so many ways, things that people wouldn't even think about. But any application you fill out almost as if you've ever been convicted of a crime. And so you're always reminded of your worst moment. You're always reminded that you're different than everybody else. You're other in society. You know, coming home, developing friendships are different. You know, when I came home, I knew I didn't want to be friends with my old friends, you know, not in the traditional sense. Like, I would still be friendly toward them. But that wasn't my social circle I wanted to spend time with, you know, so you have to build that. You have to, you know, and then you have to learn how to be in relationship with people. Like, you know, you. You go to prison, you've been through trauma, you've been through stuff that people can't imagine, and it takes time to adjust. You know, dating, all that stuff was really tough. Coming home and just figuring out who you are as a human being, you know, that that those are things that, that we don't really think about when it comes to people getting out. We're like, oh, we just want our loved one home. And it's like, yes, but they're also going to be a different human being than the one that that left. And you have to be prepared for that adjustment. And they have to be prepared, you know, And I don't think we do a good job of preparing people for life at the prison.

Yeah, it seems like people are being set up to fail and the probability that they end up feeling drugs or, you know, something like that, because what kind of job are they going to do? How are they going to reintegrate on their own? Like this just sounds like such a difficult thing to do that they. Without help reintegrating, I imagine many people fail to do it and it ends badly.

Yeah, I mean, it's super tough. You know, there are some organizations that do some incredible work. And I mean, these are orgs that should be modeled by every state city that has a high population of imprisoned people. Organizations like Anti Recidivism Coalition, Homeboy Industries, Amity Foundation. Like, these organizations are really helping people reintegrate because they start while people are inside and they start to prepare them for life and then they support them when they get out so that they have a safe passageway from prison to employment. And, you know, with that work, we've been able to get people jobs in, you know, in Hollywood, we've been able to get people jobs in construction even. You know, I don't know if people saw like the big fires that happened here in California. Some of those firefighters on the front line were people who were incarcerated, that we created a pathway for them to become full firefighters when their sentence is done. So there's a lot of great work happening. It's not all doom and gloom, but sadly, it is the minority and we just need to make that the majority.

We've talked about a lot of topics today. What would you like to leave the listener with? What would you want them to remember from this conversation?

What I would love to leave the listeners with is this big idea of freedom. What I've learned over 15 years post prison is that a lot of people who have never stepped foot into a prison system, into the back of a police car, are imprisoned by what I call hidden prisons that stand in the way of them living the life that they desire to live. The fulfillment, the joy, the happiness, the success. And what that looks like is people are imperisoned by these hidden prisons such as grief, shame, anger, the inability to forgive, things that really stand in the way of them living the most optimum life. And there is a way out of that and that I invite them to go on this journey to discovering the most magical parts of their experience, the greatest parts of their potential, and to access that through these practical steps that I've taken in my life that has taken me from the dregs of society, the the the pits of solitary confinement, all the way up to being a successful author, a producer, an investor, an entrepreneur and an executive in technology. And I know if I have done it, many people can do it, and they just need the keys to open up the doors to those hidden prisons. And they'll find them in my work and in my writing, the stories that I tell.

For anyone interested in learning more about that, you can check out Shaka's new book, how to Be Free. Shaka, thank you so much for coming on. This was a fascinating conversation.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for joining us. We always love to hear from our audience, so if you have any questions or comments, send us an email@clearerthinkingpodcastmail.com this episode was edited by tonesupport and transcribed by weamplify. We would really appreciate it if you could rate and review us wherever you're listening to this as it helps others find out about the show. Did you know you can now watch videos of the podcast? Just go to YouTube.com clearerthinkingpodcast Stay tuned in by subscribing to our email newsletter. One Helpful Idea each week, we'll send you one valuable idea that you can read about in just 30 seconds, along with that week's new podcast episode, an essay by Spencer, and announcements about upcoming events. To sign up for our newsletter, access transcripts or learn more about our guests, visit podcast.clearerthinking.org A listener asks it often seems you have thought very deeply about a wide variety of topics. Do you have a deliberate process for that?

There are many topics that I'm really interested in and they just kind of come to mind pretty regularly. And my process is simply when I have thoughts about them to make sure I get those thoughts captured. And I'll often come back to the same topic again and again over years. And then eventually when I feel like I have something to say about the topic, I'll sit down and try to write an essay about it. And that's often where my thoughts really coalesce. And so it's funny because then someone will ask me an off the cuff question. And what they don't realize is that I spent four hours writing an essay on exactly the question that they just asked me, and they think I'm just giving an answer off the cu.