Disclaimer

# Consider the source

Everything on this site comes from one guy with one conviction, who was only at one federal facility. This serves as a business that takes money from people in the worst time of their lives (hopefully).

You should know all this before you weigh a word of it. So here it is in one place, instead of scattered across pages nobody reads in order.

The license I don't have

## I'm not a lawyer.

Never was, never will be. I can't read a fucking book. Nothing here is legal advice. Please don't treat it like it.

A lawyer carries a bar license, malpractice insurance, and privilege. I carry none of the three, and I barely have health insurance. Whatever you send me isn't privileged, and if I'm wrong there's no board you can complain to, you'll just hate me.

Anything with a case caption on it belongs to an attorney: motions, appeals, 2255s, sentencing arguments, anything filed anywhere. When someone asks me that stuff, the answer is get a lawyer, and I say it for free. See also [what non-lawyers selling legal work are actually selling](/resources/non-lawyer-legal-work).

The record

## I'm a convicted felon, and that cuts both ways.

I had a sports streaming website. [My case was very well-covered](https://www.google.com/search?q=hehestreams). I don't hide from it. While I certainly dispute some of the characterizations made, I definitely, certainly, positively had a sports streaming website. [I talk about my version of events here](https://josh.mn/prison).

I'm on supervised release (post-prison supervision; not parole) right now. This chapter is coming to a close, but it's not closed.

I've gone through every step of the prison experience: I was jailed pre-trial, barely survived a detention hearing and ended up in a halfway-house pre-trial, then was strapped to an ankle monitor once I pleaded guilty (and thus deemed safe, I guess?); I self-surrendered, ended up in holding for 45 days, then transit for two weeks before finally landing at FCI Thomson the day after Christmas 2024. I went to the SHU, had my email taken away, my FSA fucked up, my SCA fucked up even worse. When I was finally released from prison, the halfway house had no idea that I was supposed to be on home confinement, and that took a few weeks to straighten out. Eventually, I end up on probation.

What my experience affords is the stuff nobody who hasn't lived it can tell you, at the cost of neutrality. I was on the receiving end of the Bureau of Prisons, and it shows in how I write about them. When you read me on the BOP, you're reading someone the BOP had.

It's also one flavor of the experience. One security level, one facility, one stretch. Wardens change, policy changes, and a compound can go from calm to political in a season. My time is a data point, not a survey.

I still answer to a probation officer (who supervises you after release). I don't think that changes my answers, but I'd be lying if I told you it can't. There are things a person under supervision thinks twice about publishing.

The money

## I sell something, and this whole site is marketing for it.

[For things that I can't answer, I sell consults](/consult). It costs money, and there's a sliding scale if my numbers aren't realistic. I take a limited number of cases so I can provide the best version of me.

On the other side, I answer questions for free. Most people who email me get an answer and never pay anything. That's ultimately the point of writing everything down here.

The free calculators, the facility guides, the annotated program statement (an official BOP policy document) pages: they exist partly because free work builds trust and shows expertise. This translates to sales. That doesn't make the math wrong, becuase the math is still the math. It does mean you're reading someone with a reason to be liked.

When I tell you that you don't need a consult, that's true. It's also good marketing. Both things can be true at once.

The money, part two

## Client money is the only money.

No referral fees, no affiliate links, no paid placement, no kickbacks, ever. I reject money from lawyers regularly.

If a person, a company, or a group gets named on this site, it's because I think it helps you. Nobody bought the mention. That won't change.

The competition

## I openly, regularly trash the industry.

There are pages on this site exist to warn you off other people's products: the one about [paying non-lawyers for legal work](/resources/non-lawyer-legal-work), the one about [paying to get to a specific facility](/resources/facility-placement), and [the myths and facts of the consulting industry](/resources/prison-consultants), which is the one that includes the eight questions you should be asking me. I believe every word of all three.

My partner was the recipient of a promise-for-pay; I was the victim. My word of warning is all because someone has a popular TikTok doesn't mean their word is good. Similarly, all because someone has a website doesn't mean their word is good, either. (And, all because you're a doctor doesn't mean you're a good doctor.)

I also compete with the people they describe, and I benefit when you walk away from them and toward me. That's a conflict of interest sitting right on top of an argument I think is correct.

The limits

## I can't describe everything. I don't know everything. I say so when I don't. When I do provide second-hand knowledge, it's well-researched and well-sourced.

I was at a low-security facility. This I lived. Lows are close enough that the day-to-day transfers, and I'll say where it doesn't. Mediums I know through people I trust who did that time, which is watching, not living. Highs and penitentiaries are outside my lane entirely, and I say so instead of guessing. The longer version of all that is [who I work best with](/good-fit).

The facility guides mix three sources: what I lived, what people inside or recently out have told me, and public records. Where a page is working from secondhand information, it says so. Where you can't tell, ask me and I'll tell you which it is. I'd rather say "I don't know" than fill the gap with something that sounds right.

The seals

## Nobody official is behind this.

Not the Bureau of Prisons, not the Department of Justice, not the courts. I'm not former staff, I don't have a back channel, and nobody at the BOP reviews a word of this site.

Which also means I can't move a designation (which prison you're assigned to), get anyone into RDAP (a drug program that can cut up to a year), add FSA credits (time off earned through programming), or shake loose a halfway house (the halfway house before release) date. Neither can anyone who tells you they can, for any price.

The program statement annotations are the Bureau's own text with my plain-English gloss next to it. The quoted policy is theirs and it's authoritative. The translation is mine and it isn't.

The shelf life

## This stuff goes stale.

Program statements get reissued. First Step Act guidance shifts. PATTERN (the risk score affecting your credits) scoring gets retuned. Halfway house math moves with bed space and whoever's running the region that month. I update pages when I catch a change, not the day it happens.

So for anything that decides a date or a placement, check me against the current program statement, a case manager (the staffer who controls your release date), or your attorney. I'd rather be checked than quoted.

**The short version:** felon, no license, one facility's worth of firsthand experience, and a business underneath the free stuff. The free stuff is still real. So is the sales pitch under it. Weigh accordingly, and [ask me anything you want to ask](/contact) once you have.