post-incarceration offer to be of service.

Hello, everyone. Life Support Alliance has invited me here to share with you whatever I think might help promote the positive, encouraging, and prosocial goals of restorative and transformative justice. Accordingly, I would like to use this very first post of mine to simply introduce myself so that you can know who I am and where I'm coming from in future posts.

I am an honorably discharged military veteran who just recently spent more than 31 years of my life continuously confined within the California prison system for two separate crimes that I indefensibly committed 15 months apart when I was 23-25 years old. I'm therefore extremely happy, grateful, excited, and proud -- as well as somewhat bewildered, frightened, and in awe -- to now be out of prison at the age of 57 as a result of the California Board of Parole Hearings granting me the privilege of rejoining free society on December 12, 2023.

I am also very emotionally overwhelmed and deeply humbled by all of the kindness, compassion, friendship, and even love that I am now getting to see for myself so many wonderful people very graciously extended to my family and friends while I was incarcerated, including by helping them with a number of online support efforts specifically concerning me such as an online petition called "Clemency or Parole for Eric Knapp" and a Go Fund Me page called "A Man Starting Anew."

Now that I am out of prison, I am eager to take full advantage of my freedom, everything that I have learned throughout my life, the social and community support networks that I worked hard to develop, establish, and maintain while incarcerated, the effective-communication skills that I acquired in prison, and whatever available funding I might someday become able to procure spending the rest of my life out here in free society making amends for my past wrongs by constructively giving back to as many people and communities as I possibly can.

Toward that end, I am always seeking any available opportunities to help promote positive, healthy, and prosocial changes by candidly speaking about the following and other such topics with as many interested audiences as I possibly can:

1. Why and how getting arrested and sent to prison was the best thing that could have happened to me.

2. The crimes I committed and what I learned while incarcerated about how I became capable of committing those crimes.

3. Why and how I came to understand while incarcerated that I became capable of the crimes I committed as a result of previously experiencing a number of adverse events and circumstances that I didn't know how to cope with in positive, healthy, and prosocial ways. (Including when I was a child, a teen, and a young adult proudly serving in each of the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Army, and the California Army National Guard, respectively.)

4. Why and how I also came to understand while incarcerated that the multiple adverse events I experienced during the first 25 years of my life caused me to develop various negative, unhealthy, and antisocial thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, character defects, coping strategies, urges, and behaviors which ultimately resulted in my decisions to engage in criminal behavior.

5. Why and how I further came to understand while incarcerated all of the serious and irreparable injury, harm, loss, and damage that I unconscionably caused many undeserving people to suffer as a result of the negative, unhealthy, and antisocial thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, character defects, coping strategies, urges, and behaviors that I developed the first 25 years of my life.

6. Why and how I worked very hard to change myself for the better while incarcerated.

7. The many books I read while incarcerated that helped me change myself for the better.

8. The many self-help resources -- both within and outside of the California prison system -- that greatly helped me change myself for the better while I was incarcerated.

9. Why and how I went from not believing in God or any other Higher Power the first 25 years of my life to becoming a devout Christian as a result of my arrest, trial, conviction, and incarceration.

10. Why and how a wonderful woman and I were able to develop, nurture, and maintain a deeply loving, honest, and spiritually based relationship with each other throughout my incarceration.

11. Why and how my mother, Ms. Barbara Cayenne Bird, spent the last 25 years of her life (until cancer took her in January 2018) being an activist for major reforms of the California criminal justice and prison systems as a result of my arrest, trial, conviction, and incarceration.

12. Why and how I myself engaged in a lot of activism while incarcerated to help call attention to the various ways that I both experienced and witnessed California's criminal justice and prison systems violate the rights of incarcerated California citizens.

13. Why and how I became a formally trained and certified paralegal while incarcerated.

14. Why and how I used my paralegal training and skills while incarcerated to provide free legal assistance to other prisoners.

15. Why and how I also used my paralegal training and skills while incarcerated to prosecute several state and federal legal actions against the California prison system's torture, oppression, and other abuses of both myself and other prisoners similarly situated.

16. Why and how I would like to help reduce the numbers of crimes and suicides that are all too often being committed by children, teens, young adults, former and active-duty military personnel, civilian peace officers, and so many other generally good and decent people who have nonetheless developed negative, unhealthy, and antisocial thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, character defects, coping strategies, urges, and behaviors that they don't know how to manage, control, or change for the better in positive, healthy, and prosocial ways.

17. Why and how I would like to reach out to, connect with, and help people of all ages who are silently suffering mental and emotional pain, anguish, and distress as a result of having a lot of unresolved hurt, anger, and resentment bottled up inside them (like I did when I was 8-25 years old) not feel so hopeless, helpless, or isolated that they too might consider suicide or engaging in criminal behavior as possible ways of providing them the relief they desperately desire.

18. Why and how I'd like to work with any interested stakeholders in creating, developing, and implementing positive, healthy, and prosocial changes in how prisoners get housed and treated from the time they're arrested to when they're eventually released back into free society.

19. Why and how I'd like to work with victim advocacy groups and other interested stakeholders to help crime victims feel and actually be more empowered and less traumatized by their involvement with the criminal justice system in California.

20. Why and how I'd like to help prisoners also change themselves for the better so that they too can someday be found suitable for parole and granted the privilege of rejoining free society like I was.

21. Why and how I'd like to help prisoners' family members and friends meaningfully, effectively, and prosocially seek and obtain redress of any seemingly wrongful treatment of their incarcerated loved ones by officials, employees, or agents of the California prison system.

22. My desire to learn how to use modern technology to reach out to, connect with, and help as many people and communities as I possibly can through the above and other such forms of positive, healthy, and prosocial activism.