Preston Thorpe is currently serving a 15–30-year prison sentence for drug trafficking, and he is now working full-time as a software engineer for a San Francisco-based tech startup called Turso.
From inside his prison cell in Maine, Thorpe logs in every day to do his job just like any other remote worker as TechCrunch reported. People call his story one of the most inspiring examples of second chances and successful rehabilitation in the U.S. justice system.
Thorpe is part of Maine’s innovative Earned Living Unit program. This program allows selected inmates to work real jobs while still in prison. Right now, around 30 inmates, including Thorpe, are part of the program. Each of them gives 10% of their income back to the state, along with other required payments like child support or restitution.
Thorpe’s path to becoming a programmer started during the COVID-19 pandemic. Locked away and reflecting on his past, he made a life-changing decision. “I had this kind of epiphany, ‘I’m going to make something of myself,’” he said in a video call from prison.
Preston Thorpe enrolled at the University of Maine and later even became an adjunct professor. He taught students who visited him in prison and gave them tours of the facility. His story began to catch attention outside the prison walls.
One person deeply moved by his transformation was Glauber Costa, the CEO of Turso. Thorpe had been contributing to one of Turso’s open-source coding projects, and Costa noticed his work. When Costa visited Thorpe’s GitHub profile, he saw that Thorpe was in prison. “I checked his GitHub profile, and he mentions the fact that he is incarcerated,” Costa said. “It’s a story I’ve never seen before.”
Costa didn’t just admire Thorpe’s skills, but he also wanted to support his journey. “I reached out to him in January, just to understand and get to know him,” Costa said. “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.”
Now, Thorpe works full-time with Turso, earning a steady income and proving that rehabilitation is possible even from behind bars. His transformation didn’t come easily. Kicked out of his home as a teenager, Thorpe turned to selling drugs purchased from the dark web.
He went to prison at age 20 and was arrested again after a short release. At that time, he said he had no hope and had given up on life. “I was a complete idiot,” he said. “I had given up on my life, completely written it off, and just accepted that this was my life and just had no hope.”
Everything changed when authorities moved him to the Mountain View Correctional Facility in Maine. Unlike his previous prison, this one had a different atmosphere. The arrival of COVID-19 gave him space and time to reflect without distractions.
“When I came to Maine, it was completely different,” he said. “COVID happened right after I came up here, and it just gave me a chance — there was no one around that I felt like I had to act or prove myself. It was just me. I felt like maybe it’s not over; maybe I could end up having a normal life.”
That belief led him into education and technology. He spent hours online learning how to code, focusing on Linux and databases. He joined Unlocked Labs, a group that hires incarcerated and formerly incarcerated engineers who build software for prisons. Later, his work with Turso earned him a paid job offer.
Maine’s Commissioner of Corrections, Randall Liberty, supports this approach to rehabilitation. “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,” he said.
Liberty added that prison should not make people worse. He believes in treating inmates as people and helping them heal and grow. Since creating these new education and work programs, Maine has seen its prison return rates drop sharply. Only 21% to 23% of men return to prison.
For women, the rate is just 9%. For those who take college classes in prison, it drops to nearly zero. Thorpe still has at least seven more years before possible release, but his life is already changing.
Reflecting on his experience, he said: “It’s like waking up from a dream, me from five years ago,” he said. Moreover, he continued, “All the memories I have of the streets and why I came to prison, it doesn’t even feel like it happened to me. It feels like it happened to someone else.”
He says having a real job has given him a sense of purpose and hope. “The worst part about prison is that you assume this identity [of a criminal],” he said. “Letting someone have a career gives you purpose.” Preston Thorpe’s story shows the world that even behind bars, people can change, grow, and contribute meaningfully to society if given a chance.
