A man has been hired to work full-time at a San Francisco-based tech startup called Turso — while serving his 11th year in prison, checking into work from his cell.
As TechCrunch reports, Preston Thorpe was personally offered the job by Turso CEO Glauber Costa, who was inspired by Thorpe’s story.
“I reached out to him in January, just to understand and get to know him,” Costa told TechCrunch. “Since then, I’ve had deep conversations with him about his change of heart that led him to be in the position where he is today.”
“Knowing his story increased our respect for him personally,” he added.
In case you’re wondering how a currently incarcerated inmate scored a cushy Silicon Valley job, you’re not alone. Thorpe is allowed to work the job remotely from custody through an experimental program in Maine, the ultimate instance of remote work that transcends 30-foot barbed wire fences and a criminal record.
Depending on how you look at it, it’s either an optimistic story of redemption and meaningful rehabilitation or the ultimate captive employee.
Thorpe ended up in prison at the age of 20 after getting caught selling drugs he bought on the dark web. After spending several years in prison, he was arrested within 14 months.
But during the COVID pandemic, Thorpe decided to turn his life around.
“I had this kind of epiphany: ‘I’m going to make something of myself,'” he told TechCrunch via video call from prison.
Thorpe remotely enrolled at the University of Maine and was even hired later on to serve as an adjunct professor.
Thorpe is one of roughly 30 inmates living in the Earned Living Unit of the Mountain View Correctional Facility in Maine. Ten percent of their income goes to the state, plus other fees, including child support or restitution.
Maine Department of Corrections Commissioner Randall Liberty sees the program as a major success.
“I have to be able to explain this to people on the right and the left,” he told TechCrunch. “When they hear that Preston is making the kind of money he makes, their jaw drops. And I say to them, ‘If you truly care about making the community safer, if you care about being fiscally responsible, if you care about victims and survivors in the community, this is the way to make them whole.'”
Thorpe has also fully embraced his new life as a remote worker, making a decent living as a programmer.
“It’s like waking up from a dream, me from five years ago,” he told the publication. “All the memories I have of the streets and why I came to prison, it doesn’t even feel like it happened to me.”
Thorpe was sentenced to “15 to 30 years” of state prison in 2017, which means he still has at least around seven more years before he can work from a home office — unless he’s released early for good behavior.
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