Samual Nathaniel Brown

Samual Nathaniel Brown

Known for	Theory of Emotional Illiteracy-Based Criminality; 10P Emotional Literacy System
Role	Founder & Director, 10P Program
Based in	Los Angeles, California
Founded 10P	2014, New Folsom (California State Prison, Sacramento)
Years incarcerated	24 (paroled December 2021)
Education	A.A., Social Science (Dean's honors); A.A.-T., Sociology, Lake Tahoe Community College; Communication Studies, California State University, Los Angeles
Publisher	Burning Ankh Publishing
Honors	Two-time California state champion, spoken-word poetry

Samual Nathaniel Brown is an American educator, author, artist and justice advocate based in Los Angeles. He is the founder and director of the 10P Program, the author of the Theory of Emotional Illiteracy-Based Criminality (TEIBC) (TEIBC), and the developer of The 10P Emotional Literacy System. He is the editor of this encyclopedia.

Brown served 24 years in California state prisons before paroling from Lancaster in December 2021.¹ His work is defined by a conviction he arrived at inside: no one is born bad, and the people who have lived the problem are among the best qualified to diagnose it.

Lived experience

Brown entered the California prison system as a young man and spent much of his sentence on maximum-security Level IV yards. He has written candidly about that period, including a disciplinary record that, by his own account, once listed some twenty serious rule violations.² He describes his younger self as fitting many of the criteria for antisocial personality disorder — persistent hostility, an inability to conform to lawful behavior, an inability to set and reach long-term goals — and he does not hide from it. The transformation that followed is the evidence on which his work stands.

Over the following years he completed thousands of hours of self-help programming and learned to facilitate it himself.¹ He chaired Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous on his yard, co-led victim-offender mediation, and built educational partnerships that brought college coursework to people inside.²¹

Autodidact and carceral scholar

Brown is, in his own word, an autodidact. Much of his education came from prison libraries, where he read psychology, criminology and philosophy on his own — including the diagnostic manual whose definition of antisocial personality disorder set the Theory of Emotional Illiteracy-Based Criminality in motion.²

He also pursued formal education from inside. He earned an Associate's degree in Social Science with dean's honors and an Associate in Arts for Transfer in Sociology from Lake Tahoe Community College — becoming, by his account, the first incarcerated person to graduate from that program — and went on to study Communication at California State University, Los Angeles, holding a 4.0 grade point average.² He describes himself as a critical scholar of the postcolonial, post-positivist and postmodern schools of thought, and insists on the term carceral scholars for people who study and teach from inside the system.²

Founding 10P

In 2014, at New Folsom — a maximum-security, Level IV, 180-design prison — Brown created the 10P Program, a curriculum written in response to the violence, trauma and despair he saw on the yard.¹³ The name stands for "A Powerful Person's Portfolio is Positive Programming and Prior Preparation to Provide Phenomenal Possibilities." 10P reached about 2,200 people institution-wide and, at one point, carried a waitlist measured in years.¹

10P went on to launch a Boys 2 Men program at California State Prison, Los Angeles County (Lancaster) and, after Brown's release, grew into a statewide organization serving youth, families, athletes, people with disabilities, organizations and community circles.

The theory

In December 2016, a parole-board psychological evaluation diagnosed Brown with antisocial personality disorder. Instead of accepting the label as permanent, he studied it — and asked what its opposite was. His answer became the Theory of Emotional Illiteracy-Based Criminality, which he began developing in 2018 while serving a life sentence and published that year through his own imprint, Burning Ankh Publishing.² The theory holds that people adopt criminality as a coping mechanism for unprocessed trauma, and that emotional literacy is the path back to prosocial life.

Advocacy and art

Brown is a two-time California state champion in spoken-word poetry and a lifelong organizer. His work helped drive the effort to end involuntary servitude in California prisons.¹ He also founded New Nubian Fashions, a family apparel brand whose designs — "Triumph Over Trauma," "Family Response-Ability," the crown collection — carry 10P's language into everyday life, and he records music, including the anthem "I AGREE" (Advocate Gender Racial Economic Equality).

Philosophy

Three ideas run through Brown's teaching:

• No one is born bad. "100% of the people we have interviewed within the prison system were a casualty before they were an offender."⁴
• The diagnosis should come from the people in need of the change. "A person that has suffered the ill and discovered the way to heal is far more equipped and qualified to discuss the issue. I am he."²
• There are more people in prison than there are incarcerated. Emotional literacy is for everyone with a heartbeat.

Selected works

• The Theory of Emotional Illiteracy-Based Criminality (Burning Ankh Publishing, 2018)
• How I Overcame Antisocial Personality Disorder Through Emotional Literacy: A Self-Study (manuscript)
• B.E.L.T. — Bridging Emotional Literacy and Transition (32-week curriculum)
• THE BRAIN Project — independent-study courses, C1–C16

See also

• Theory of Emotional Illiteracy-Based Criminality (TEIBC)
• The 10P Emotional Literacy System
• THE BRAIN Project
• Emotional literacy in prisons and reentry

Cite this entry: Samual Nathaniel Brown. “Samual Nathaniel Brown.” The Emotional Literacy Encyclopedia, 10P Program, 2026-10-25. https://emotionalliteracy.org/encyclopedia/samual-nathaniel-brown/