S3E10: How math rehabilitated a murderer w/ Christopher Havens

When this podcast started, interviewing a convicted murderer - while he was still in prison, no less - was admittedly not on Vanessa’s “Math Therapy guest” bingo card. But then we heard how Christopher Havens discovered math in solitary confinement halfway through a 25-year sentence, and committed the rest of his life to rehabilitating himself and repaying his debt to society.  On today’s season 3 finale of Math Therapy, Vanessa chats with Christopher about how a lack of purpose in his youth and the misguided desire to be “cool” led him down a very dark road, how math gave him a sense of spirituality and purpose in prison, and how his own rehabilitation led him to withdraw from the stereotypical “prison game” and devote the rest of his life to developing programs and resources for other prisoners to do the same.

About Christopher 

Christopher Havens is a mathematician & president/cofounder of the Prison Mathematics Project, a nonprofit program that uses the transformative powers of mathematics to lead prisoners to a life of desistance from crime. While his current focus is in cryptography and the theory of groups, he works to popularize mathematics and redefine what productivity looks like in prison. He is a researcher in number theory and has recently published his first academic paper in the journal or Research in Number Theory, while serving out his sentence. 

Show notes

• Popular Mechanics profile on Christopher’s life story
• PrisonMathProject.org
• HumanMe.org blog feat. inmates committed to rehabilitation

Connect with us:

• Prison Mathematics Project: (Twitter, Insta, Facebook)
• Vanessa Vakharia: @themathguru (Insta, Twitter, TikTok)
• Math Therapy: @maththerapy (Twitter)

Transcript for today’s episode: www.maththerapypodcast.com