 Before I start my talk, I want to cover a couple things. First of all, I want to give a really warm and heartfelt thank you to the organizers of OS Fields. I think that this is a very special conference. And when I look at the group of speakers, I feel super honored and humbled to be included. So thank you for having me. Also, looking out at the audience, I can't tell you how excited I am that this community exists, and that I get to be a part of it. You guys are my people. So thank you. Next, I want to give a trigger warning. I'm going to be talking about prison today in my talk. I'm going to be asking you to think about your personal relationship to folks in prison and people in prison. And so I just want to give you the heads up that I'm going to be talking about that today. And third, I want to warn you, there is a 100% chance of curse words today. Prison fucking sucks. And it's really difficult to talk about it without cursing just a little bit. I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. So back to me. Like a lot of you here in the room today, I work in tech. I work at a small software company called Energy Savvy. Some of you may have heard of it. Most of you probably haven't. But today's talk is not about that. You see, I work part-time at Energy Savvy. And the other part-time, I work at a nonprofit called Unloop, where I'm one of the co-founders. Now, in order to talk about Unloop, there's a few things I have to cover. Because today, I'm going to be talking to you about prison, about people in prison, about people in prison doing tech stuff. And yes, that exists. And most importantly, why that is so damn important for us to talk about here today in this room with this community. So to get started, I'm going to zoom out, and I'm going to get really high-level. And I'm going to talk to you guys about prison. You see, today in the US, we have roughly 2.3 million people behind bars. And to give you an understanding of what that number means and how you can kind of make sense of it in your head, that's roughly the population of North Dakota and South Dakota and Wyoming combined. Combined. Now, if you think about this in the terms of the whole world, the US only has 5% of the world's population. But we incarcerate over 25% of the world's prison population. And that's just the folks who are in prison right now today. To give you another frame of reference, we have about 68 million people who are outside prison and living with a criminal background or a rest record. 68 million people. That is more people than we have in the US today who have four-year bachelor degrees. And when we talk about the big picture of prison in our mass incarceration, you can't talk about it without talking about race, right? Because people of color are incarcerated at disproportionately higher rates than white folks in the US. Specifically, African-American men and women are incarcerated at a rate six times that of white folks. I'm a white woman, obviously. Super white. And the odds of me going to prison in my lifetime, one in 111. If I were a black dude, the odds of me going to prison would be one in three, all right? And as I continue, sometimes I feel like you could have 20 whole presentations about this. But as I continue my talk, I want you to continue to think about that because it impacts everything we talk about. Now, mass incarceration is a huge issue. And for the sake of my short talk, I'm going to cover a very specific problem that's part of it. And that problem is recidivism. And it's OK, I had to Google this at 1.2. Recidivism is when someone who has been released from prison returns to prison. And the big deal about that is that today in the US, one in two people who are released from prison will return within their lifetimes. One in two. And we have 650,000 people being released this year alone. What that means is that 325,000 of them, roughly, will go back within their lifetimes. And that comes at the high cost of, well, first of all, $34,000 a year of your taxpayer money, at the cost of 325,000 crimes committed in our communities. And most importantly, at the cost of 325,000 families torn apart by the impact of a family member on the inside. Now, here's the thing. And I already said it, I'm going to say it again later. Prison sucks. Prison is awful, it's traumatic. And every time I go to prison, I only ever meet people who cannot wait to get out, who can't wait to be with their families, get a job, rebuild their lives, and never, ever go back to prison. So we have to ask ourselves, why is this happening? Incredibly high rates of recidivism, incredibly high rates of people who don't want to recidivate, right? And so before we talk about why recidivism is happening at such a high rate, I want you to close your eyes. And just bear with me, if you close your eyes, that would be really cool. You can peek, don't really care. But I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to think about the person closest to you, maybe your family, closest to you who has been in prison. Maybe that's you, maybe that's your family member, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's an acquaintance. And when we go through this next part, I want you to keep them in the back of your mind because we'll talk about stats and that's impersonal. But if you can't think of anyone, which I'm sure some of you can, I want you to think about that too, real close. Now, recidivism, why do we have such a high recidivism rate? Why are so many people going back to prison? Well, people return to prison because they commit crimes, but it's incredibly important to be aware of the demographics that we have in our prison system today. On average, and I know there's some dumb slides here, but the contents are good stuff. On average, folks going to prison, average income level of $12,000 a year, average education level of 10th grade, average unemployment rate of 60%, and folks going to prison have significantly higher rates of addiction than past addiction. Now, that's going into prison. Then once you're in prison, things don't get any better because you have limited access to higher education. We got rid of university-level classes in prison in the 90s, and vocational education is limited to a year. Additionally, there is limited access to high-wage, high-growth job training and, very importantly, you are separated from your support networks and you build a new support network. And then, on top of that, you get out. And coming out of prison, you're faced with the stigma and the ostracism that come along with having criminal background. And this is Seattle, but even in this culturally progressive and empathetic city, it is incredibly difficult to get a job. And the majority of people who are released cannot find a job within the first year of their release. So you can see where this ends up, right? We have coming in, on average, high-risk circumstances, doesn't get any better, gets even worse. You see how this becomes a cycle, right? And that is a cycle of recidivism. And so, this is where the robots come in. And I know you guys are waiting for this part. It's good. But this is where the robots and tech as an industry come in. Because, first of all, we know that professional skills and education reduce recidivism. Folks who work in re-entry and anti-recidivism work, that is a fact. Second, is we have a ton of open jobs in tech today and a high demand for those skills. And third, and most importantly, tech programming. Programming is built on the foundation that it doesn't matter what you look like, where you're from, how you dress. If you can write good code, you can get a job. I mentioned this before, but I'm the co-founder of Unloop. And we are working today to enable people who have been in prison to succeed in careers in tech and break down that cycle of recidivism, right? Last year, I went to prison for the first time in my life as a visitor. And I visited a programming class that exists today at Clawland Bay. I met people who had built a first person 3D shooter video game from scratch, a file sharing app from scratch, all without internet, without Stack Overflow. I know. I know. A clause is not for me. I could not do that, right? I met folks who would take programming books back to their cells at night to pound before the next day. I cannot tell you, impress is not enough. I cannot tell you how impressed I was with that class and how motivated I was to give what resources I had to them. You see, and I thought about this a lot on the drive back because it's about four and a half hours. Prison is never anywhere close. And I thought about this a lot. A lot of thoughts and, of course, a lot of feels. And I thought about what I could do with that motivation because as brilliant as I found that class, they still faced so many barriers. First of all, they were limited to one year education under vocational education, which is what programming falls under, conveniently. Second of all, they were isolated from the tech industry. Besides having no internet, it's also very physically isolating. And because no one thinks about prison, folks don't visit. In the three years of having a class out there, we were the first folks to go out. David, my co-founder, right there. First person to go out and visit them. And you can imagine that writing code, you're sitting in a box. You're isolated. You have no idea what you're learning is the right thing. You have no idea if you're actually good at it. You only have the validation from your teacher, and you're like, great. You're being paid to be here. I don't know what you're telling me is the truth. And then you get folks to come from the outside and say, yes, it is. And third, even overcoming both of those obstacles and still learning to code and being awesome programmers, there are still this thing that exists, which I call a chasm. But basically, it's getting out and facing incredibly high obstacles to succeeding in tech. And lastly, outside of this class, it's kind of one of a kind. There are, I think, only a couple coding classes in prison in the US today. And so coming away from that class, it seemed very clear that the aptitude and the ability and the motivation and the desire is there. And what was needed was more resources and expansion of opportunity. So fast forward a little bit. I am back in prison. I am in a women's prison with a bunch of these robots, a bunch of badass lady devs, and a bunch of students. And we taught introduction to programming with these robots. This student programmed her robot to follow a line, to avoid obstacles, to flash lights as obstacles approached. It was fucking awesome. Fast forward a little more. That workshop turned into a series of workshops at different prisons until today when we were running computer programming classes in prison right now, like literally right now they are in class building web apps. It's great, right? And I wish that they had internet in prison. I wish that all the time, but I wish it right now because I wish that they could Skype into this talk so they could hear me brag about it. Because it's one thing to see a problem, recidivism, and envision a solution, economic empowerment and personal empowerment through tech. And it's another thing completely to see someone sharp and motivated seize that opportunity and make the very most of it that they can. I'm constantly struck by this understanding I'm constantly struck by this untapped intellectual and creative potential that we have behind bars right now in Washington and in our country, right? And that potential often feels like it is without opportunity and set up for failure. Now, we're working today to provide that opportunity. I personally really don't think on the front end it's that difficult. We are working to set up further education programs both in prison and outside of prison. We are running a boot camp beginning of 2017. We're working to set up a dev shop on the inside so that folks can get the work experience and the skills they need to hit the ground running when they get out. And third and most importantly, we are building a model for ongoing community support. And when I say community, I'm looking at you guys, right? We are the community. And because in tech today, we talk about diversity all the time. Everyone's buzzword, swear to God, right? But what do we really mean when we talk about diversity? Because if what we're talking about is the inclusion of all peoples and all populations and the representation of all peoples and all populations, then we are leaving a group out of that conversation altogether. And this is a group of people who are too motivated, too sharp and work too damn hard to be left out of that conversation. Thank you. Right? Okay, cool. Shucks. And so going forward and leaving this room, I have a couple ways to ask you to be that community support. And when I say community support, I don't mean money, you can give us money, money's great, you're welcome to give us money if you want to. But what I'm really talking about is getting involved. And there are a number of different ways to do that. Volunteer, volunteer one of our classes and one of our workshops. You can volunteer as a mentor for one of our education programs. And most importantly, you can be a part of that community support. And that's what I mean by that is starting that conversation. If you are an employee, that's starting that conversation in your workplace. Do we hire folks with backgrounds? Why not? Have we talked about it? And if you're an employer, that's providing an opportunity. And when I say provide an opportunity, I'm not going to hand out a promised job. I'm talking about an interview and a fair shot. Right? What all of us want, right? So, and lastly, I invite you guys here who are listening to come to prison with me. I will take you inside, I'll take you back outside at the end of the day. Come meet our students. They are the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.