Money Changed Everything for Me in Prison

My federal prison sentence ended three months ago, and for someone who’s been free only that long, it would appear that I have accomplished quite a lot. During my last year of confinement, I moved into a halfway house and enrolled at Portland State University; I received high academic honors, and an upcoming study-abroad scholarship to South America; I got a job as an interpreter for a medical contractor, using the Spanish I learned in prison.

Does that mean prison “worked” for me? Or have I managed to thrive just because I was among the 1 percent of prisoners in the first place?

Six months before my arrest on a drug charge, my mom died of a prescription-drug overdose. I received $96,000 in life insurance. I might have squandered it on drugs—anything to numb the grief—but she had arranged for it to be doled out to me