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Michael Santos

Michael Santos is in the seventeenth year of a 45-year prison sentence in the United States for distributing cocaine. Among his books are What if I go to Prison? (2003) and About Prison (2004).

Recent articles


My literary escape from punishment

Inside the prison walls, books can set the mind free. In his eighteenth year of confinement, Michael Santos reflects on a life redeemed by imagination.

Race in the anti-society

The American high–security prison is a primitive and violent world that encourages a retreat to racial bonding as one of the few guarantees of security. At the borders of white, Hispanic and black gang affiliation, between a criminal past and the hope of a future on the outside, long–term inmate Michael Santos takes us inside a multicultural battleground.

Growing up in prison

Tattooed, tough, and looking to make his name inside, the future seems to hold only more jail time for Jessie. Michael Santos, a veteran of seventeen years, and numerous maximum security prisons, watches, and helps, Jessie grow up inside.

The land of the unfree: America from inside

The Unites States prison population is 2.1 million – over twice the number in 1988, when the first President Bush was elected. Most of them are non-violent drug offenders. Sixteen years after his incarceration for cocaine distribution, Michael Santos reflects on the political cycle he has witnessed from the wrong side of the prison walls.