About

My name is Salvador Castañeda, and I am a native of the Pacific Northwest. I am a builder of structures and people, bilingual in English and Spanish, with over twenty years of experience as a tradesperson and instructor.

What I Do

I build, and I teach others to build. My professional background spans welding, fabrication, construction, plumbing, electrical, and facilities maintenance. I hold certifications in OSHA construction safety and health, industrial hygiene, fall protection, excavation and trenching, electrical standards, confined space, and forklift instruction.

At Portland Community College, I progressed from part-time lab technician to outreach coordinator to a full-time trades instructor over four years. I taught trades preparation, residential electrical wiring, OSHA 30 construction safety, forklift safety and code, and first aid. I coordinated state-recognized certifications for students and served as safety committee chair at the trades center. In 2018, I received a distinction award for academic professionals, selected from a nominated pool of 30 among approximately 800 professionals. I also completed a pre-apprenticeship program as a student in 2014, earning a perfect attendance award and a scholarship, which gave me a firsthand understanding of the path my students would walk.

Many of my students had experienced homelessness and incarceration. I meet people where they are, and I practice patience with learners who need repetition, clarity, and encouragement. I have presented to groups ranging from a handful of participants to over a hundred—community members, students, industry partners, and high school students exploring careers in the trades.

I also served on the board of a nonprofit that provides free critical home repairs to low-income homeowners, seniors, individuals with disabilities, families with children, and veterans. Beyond board service, I volunteered for repairs directly and consulted on safe work practices. One project stays with me: a homeowner with a compromised immune system had been unable to live in her home for about a year because water damage had created a hazardous environment. A colleague and I completed the structural repairs—subflooring, water lines, new flooring throughout—while supervising students learning the trades. When the homeowner returned, she could live safely in her home again. That combination—skilled work, teaching, and tangible impact—is the intersection where I operate best.

As a member of a construction safety alliance, I worked to dismantle the industry’s discriminatory and exclusionary culture through education, training, and barrier removal. I believe that when a worker is targeted, harassed, or devalued, they lose focus while engaged in hazardous tasks, creating a dangerous workplace for themselves and others. Workplace safety, psychological safety, and workplace dignity are inseparable.

What I Am Building

I am co-founding an AI-powered educational platform with a close friend. The platform uses large language models to deliver personalized, conversational education to incarcerated individuals through an email-based interface compatible with federal and state correctional systems. The initial focus is writing, critical thinking, and legal self-advocacy. I provide the vision and insight on the federal Bureau of Prisons system; my partner handles the technical architecture, content, and learning paths.

I have also designed a structured self-education pathway—a mastery-based curriculum for self-directed study during my upcoming incarceration. The pathway governs over thirty units across four tiers, spanning writing, AI literacy, financial modeling, and applied research. Every unit produces a deliverable assessed against a defined standard. The curriculum does not measure time spent. It measures what I can demonstrate.

What I Am Accountable For

From childhood through to the age of 25, I cycled through the criminal justice system. I built everything described above in the years that followed. Later, I began making poor financial decisions, and rather than confront them directly, I made a series of more serious decisions—including trafficking drugs again—to pay down my debt. I am currently facing a second federal case as a result.

My decisions have reinjured those closest to me, and I acknowledge the pain I have caused will have lifelong consequences. I take full responsibility for that. I lacked a plan, a support structure, and the self-awareness to recognize destructive patterns before they repeated. I now track every commitment in writing, submit major decisions to people I trust before acting, and publish my reasoning on this site where anyone can examine it.

Where I Am Headed

The system of incarceration is only concerned with the turning of calendar pages. I reject that metric. Time served is a bureaucratic measure; merit is the standard that matters.

I will be writing regularly while in federal prison—memorializing my thinking, my progress, and my failures in plain view. I intend to complete the self-education pathway I designed, contribute to the educational platform I am co-founding, and return to teaching people how to build careers and solve problems. Teaching is not a chapter of my life that ended with my arrest. It is the work I was made for, and I intend to return to it.

This site is a public record. I do not expect trust. I do not ask anyone to believe I have changed. I ask them to watch, verify, and hold me accountable over time. The evidence will either be there, or it will not.

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RELEASE PLAN V01_2026-05-13

Salvador Castañeda, Jr.
USMS Register No. 11659-085

Purpose

This release plan documents the housing, employment, education, transportation, and support structures I have established and will maintain during incarceration and upon release. It is a living document. I intend to update it as I complete programs, reach milestones, and refine my plans based on what I learn inside the facility. I submit it now because the preparation began before sentencing–not after.

Housing

Upon release, I will return to my primary place of residence, where my wife and children reside. The area around my residence is served by public transit. The neighborhood is stable, and the home provides proximity to employment opportunities across the metropolitan area.

Employment

Unfettered. In February 2026, I co-founded Unfettered, an AI-powered education platform for incarcerated learners. The platform is live at unfettered.world. It delivers personalized instruction through email–the only communication channel available to most people inside federal facilities. The learner writes to an AI companion named Waters, and Waters responds with guided Socratic dialogue adapted to the learner’s interests, questions, and progress. The platform operates within the existing facility email infrastructure. Nothing new to install, no internet access required, no changes to existing security protocols.

I will be Unfettered’s first incarcerated user. The platform I co-founded will serve me as a learner while I serve my sentence. My technical co-founder will continue development during my incarceration, and I will contribute strategic direction, product feedback, and field research via CORRLINKS email. Upon release, I will resume full operational involvement.

Construction Industry. I hold OSHA Construction Safety certifications and have direct experience as a pre-apprenticeship instructor. In February 2015, I was hired as an instructional support technician at a community college. I was promoted to full-time in September 2015, took on the roles of outreach coordinator and program advisor in 2017, and became a full-time pre-apprenticeship instructor in 2019, earning approximately $83,178 annually. In June 2018, I received the Academic Professional of Distinction Award–selected from a nominated pool of thirty among approximately 800 academic professionals. I was the chief architect of the college’s flagship welding program, a program serving underserved, systems-impacted, and houseless students.

These credentials provide immediate employment options upon release. The surrounding metropolitan area has sustained demand for construction safety professionals and trades instructors. I intend to pursue employment in this sector concurrent with my work on Unfettered.

Education

I designed a Self-Education Pathway–a mastery-based curriculum–to govern my study during incarceration. The pathway is not a reading list. It is a structured program that produces evidence of competence: written deliverables, research findings, professional documents, and product evaluations, each assessed against defined standards.

The curriculum is organized into three priorities built on a research foundation.

The research foundation is a multi-year field study documenting how incarcerated people learn inside a federal facility. I am a member of the population I am studying. The research follows a structured protocol separating observation from interpretation, and it feeds directly into Unfettered’s product development.

The first priority is writing–formal grammar, syntax, rhetorical structure, and professional document production. Every deliverable in the curriculum is a written artifact.

The second priority is artificial intelligence literacy, demonstrated through four applied domains: carceral education, legal guidance, construction safety, and product evaluation. The objective is not to survey the field but to build the transferable skill of evaluating where AI creates genuine value across industries.

The third priority is building an AI-powered guidance platform for federal defendants and their families–a population currently underserved by existing resources.

Every unit produces a deliverable. Every deliverable is assessed against five criteria: clear thesis, evidence-based, counterarguments addressed, mechanically sound, and audience-appropriate. Each criterion has a specific test that produces a verifiable result. Deliverables undergo teach-back testing and peer review. Work assessed without external review is given provisional status until a reviewer becomes available.

I have allocated approximately 2,935 to 4,010 hours across the curriculum. The full master document–including the research protocol, curriculum architecture, reading list, and assessment standards–is available on my website, salvadorcastaneda.com. I also intend to pursue any educational programming offered at my designated facility, including vocational training and all First Step Act-approved Evidence-Based Recidivism Reduction programs available.

Transportation

My wife maintains a vehicle and has confirmed her availability to provide transportation upon release. The area is served by public transportation, including bus and light rail, providing access to employment, probation appointments, and community resources throughout the Portland metropolitan area.

Support Network

I have built a support network that provides accountability, not comfort. The people in this network know my history, know what I did, and have agreed to remain involved–not because they believe I have changed, but because they are willing to evaluate the evidence as I produce it. I will continue to grow my network throughout my incarceration.

Financial Obligations

I am prepared to liquidate tools and other assets to begin paying any restitution the Court orders. I will create a structured repayment plan upon release and begin payments immediately, documenting every payment for my probation officer.

The reckless spending and financial dishonesty that preceded this offense were decisions I made and refused to confront. Financial literacy is embedded in my Self-Education Pathway–not as an elective but as a required competency.

Accountability Structures

I identified a specific vulnerability in my own thinking: I can eliminate reasonable alternatives, narrow my own field of vision, and convince myself that an irrational path is the only path available. That is not a general human weakness. It is a mechanism I traced through my own history, and every accountability structure I have built is designed to prevent it from operating unchecked.

salvadorcastaneda.com. I launched a public accountability website where I define my guiding principles (Accountability, Authenticity, Integrity, Responsibility), my values (Achievement, Appreciation, Aspiration, Education, Family, Fitness, Support Network), my attributes (Action, Attitude, Awareness, Discipline), and my goals. I document my progress publicly. The site gives my family and support network a transparent mechanism to evaluate whether my actions align with my stated commitments. I will maintain daily entries from inside the facility through an email-based publishing workflow I built for this purpose.

Support meetings. Weekly attendance since February 24, 2026. Voluntary, not court-ordered. I intend to establish a chapter at my designated facility with the co-founder’s support and to continue participation upon release.

Self-Education Pathway Assessment System. The curriculum includes six layers of self-deception countermeasures: falsifiable criteria, external evaluation as the default, provisional status for unreviewed work, documented revision history, monthly self-audit, and the cross-thread principle–the recognition that my mind, left to evaluate itself, will return a favorable verdict. The system does not rely on my integrity to function. It relies on structural checks that make it difficult to advance substandard work.

REDI. I have produced a product requirements document for REDI (Reintegrating with Discipline and Integrity), a self-directed accountability application for individuals in reintegration and under community supervision. The app is designed to document behavioral consistency over time and reward sustained accountability with increased autonomy. REDI is at the design stage. I intend to develop it further during incarceration and pursue its construction upon release.

Compliance

I have complied with all conditions of my pretrial release–monthly reporting to U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services and urinalysis testing when directed. I have maintained sobriety from drug use and alcohol abuse since 2006, twenty years. These are baseline obligations, not evidence of merit. I cite them only to confirm I have met them without exception.

I will comply with all conditions of supervised release imposed by the Court. I will report to my probation officer as directed, submit to testing, maintain employment, pay restitution, and meet every requirement on time and in full.

Conclusion

I do not present this plan as proof that I have changed. I present it as evidence that I have begun the work, that the structures are in place, and that those structures are designed to sustain accountability, whether or not anyone is watching.

This plan is a living document. I will update it as I complete programs, reach milestones, and refine my approach based on what I learn. I intend to publish updated versions on my Prison Professors profile and at salvadorcastaneda.com, making my progress visible and auditable to anyone willing to examine it.

The question of whether I can be trusted is not answered once. It is answered daily–through action, through transparency, and through the willingness to submit my thinking to people who will not be convinced by words alone.

Respectfully submitted,

Salvador Castañeda, Jr.

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