How to Live a Successful Life After Prison

Many of you know the background, but let me summarize it anyway.

I began doing crime as a youngster and did something criminal almost every day for 20 consecutive years. I entered prison for the first time as a teenager and spent most of the 1960s decades doing time in North Carolina correctional institutions. Released on Dec. 9, 1968, I've spent more than 40 years learning, not only how to stay out of crime and prison, but also how to achieve success despite a long crime and prison record.
I got my first job after prison about two weeks after being released. I have never been unemployed since. Despite dropping out of school in the 10th grade and never returning, I have been a professional writer, a college professor, a radio station manager, a television public affairs producer and since 1979 a successful homebased business owner.

Now, I want to share this knowledge, understanding, wisdom and experience with as many as possible of the more than 600,000 men and women released each year from the nation's prisons. Over time, I want to accomplish the following:

1. Assist 1 million men and women in learning how to have a successful life after prison.
2. Assist the Families and Loved Ones of Criminals ( the FLOC) in educating themselves on how to become catalysts for constructive change in the lives of individuals trapped in crime's illusionary matrix.
3. Establish a comprehensive "body of literature" about the change continuum directly related to transforming from criminal to community contributor.
4. Establish a comprehensive commercial strategy to reach millions of customers with this life-altering knowledge that could become one of the world's most enduring values as we continue a countdown to the World Ahead.

In this series of articles, I will outline each of the curricula, including brief explanations of each learning module's content. Please consider first the seven courses in the curriculum for men and women scheduled for release from prison:

1. Exit the confusion of illusions
2. Engage the education of the essence
3. Plan with your T.E.A.M.
4..Focus on the Vision
5. Mature holistically
6.Continue to the top
7. Reach out and down

I wil deliver this curriculum to men and women in prison as a correspondence course. Each enrollee will get four lessons and a quiz. When they mail the completed quiz to their assigned instructional team leader, they will get four additional lessons, the corrected quiz and another quiz. This process continues throughout the three-year curriculum.

Consider now the courses in the curriculum that targets the FLOC:

1. Characteristics cause crime
2. Only criminals can reduce crime, but . . .
3. . . .All stakeholders share responsibilities
4. Crime victims must regain power over their lives
5. Crime response professionals--from punishment to change
6. Citizens, challenged to mandate change as the only equitable return on investment
7. Careerists: learning the difference between criminals who con, and change activists

I deliver this curriculum electronically over the internet. These courses include an e-book entitled From FLOC to NFLOC, (Network of the Families And Loved Ones of Criminals.

Stay tuned!