He was the kid in the back of the courtroom. He knows exactly what that kid is thinking.
Every year, more than 650,000 men and women are released from incarceration in the United States. What waits for them isn't a fresh start — it's closed doors, cold labels, and a society that remembers the charge but forgets the human.
Sharmain Harris lived those odds. He came home to the same walls every justice-impacted person hits: no opportunity, no benefit of the doubt, and a label doing everything it could to become his identity.
He refused to let it. Through relentless growth, education, and faith, he rebuilt everything — became a devoted father, earned multiple college degrees, and stepped to the front of a University of Wisconsin-Parkside classroom as a professor of criminal justice. The state that once sentenced him handed him an official pardon from the Governor of Wisconsin.
Rising Above the Odds: My Journey from Pain and Prison to Power and Purpose is that whole road — part memoir, part manual. The hard truths, the turning points, and a practical path forward for anyone ready to rebuild.
