People who are incarcerated are paid notoriously low wages for kitchen, laundry work and maintenance.
But the expanded use of laptops is creating other opportunities.
This is part two in a two-part series about remote work in Maine prisons. To read part one, click here.
Preston Thorpe is only 32, but he says he's already landed his dream job as a senior software engineer and bought a modest house with his six-figure salary. It was all accomplished by putting in long days from his cell at the Mountain View Correctional Center in Charleston.
"It's not normal to have 15-17 hours a day to really focus on something and learn something, like deeply," Thorpe says. "And fortunately tech is one of the few areas where they're not concerned with your college degree. They're really only concerned with your ability to write code."
A self-described "computer geek," Thorpe says he built his first computer at age 13. In high school he always expected he'd have a career in tech. But he also had a rebellious side. He got into trouble with drugs, using them and selling them. He says his parents kicked him out of the house and he ended up in prison for the first time at age 20.
"You know, I was worried and pretty hopeless that I had messed my life up so bad that it was no longer possible to have like a normal life and normal career," he says.
When you have nothing to lose, Thorpe says it's pretty easy to behave that way. And when you're out of prison with a criminal record, no money and an identity as a convict, he says the likelihood you're going to improve your life in any way is zero.
His own circumstances changed in 2019 when he got transferred from the New Hampshire prison system to Maine, where he discovered laptops with limited internet access were available for education. That's when he says he had an epiphany that he could change himself by pursuing his passion. And about two years ago, he became one of the first incarcerated people in the country to get hired for a remote job.
"Now I feel like my life has purpose," Thorpe says.
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