At the end of his seven-year sentence for cocaine and firearm possession in 2015, Joe Guerrero of Virginia was 32 years old and directionless. He had spent much of his adult life wrestling with the criminal justice system, the result of a drug addiction that began in his teens and led to years of robbery, partying and destructive behavior. Guerrero feared he was destined to return to prison, reports the Washington Post. As a last-ditch effort to prove he was trying to repair his life, the former inmate began documenting his struggle to reintegrate into society on YouTube. He filmed visits to temp agencies and posted videos discussing his frustrations with probation. At first, few noticed. Seven months after he started, Guerrero posted a video about how to make a prison tattoo gun. It went viral, racking up 2.3 million views.
Three years and more than 700 videos later, what began as a series of grainy, amateurish vlogs has blossomed into a YouTube channel with 1.2 million subscribers called the “After Prison Show.” Guerrero’s channel nets him a six-figure income that allowed him to quit as a laborer at a concrete factory. “Until now, my life had been a constant failure,” said Guerrero, whose social media experience before prison was limited to Myspace. “A lot of people have no idea what it’s like to serve time and then try and restart their life.” The “After Prison Show” is the flagship among a growing number of YouTube channels devoted to the gritty reality of life in prison. “Everyone in America right now has a family member or a friend or knows someone in prison,” said Shaun Attwood, a former drug dealer whose YouTube channel on the brutality of prison life has 175,000 subscribers.