From DIN to EIN: How I Changed The Game (Part I)

From DIN to EIN

Part I: What the System Makes You

Before there was a curriculum, a platform, or a method, there was a number.

In New York State, it’s called a DIN. In other places, it goes by different names, but the function is the same. It’s an administrative identifier, a way to track bodies through a system built for scale and control. On paper, it’s neutral. In reality, it’s transformative in the worst way.

Once you are assigned a number, the system no longer has to know you. Your story becomes secondary. Your context becomes optional. Your complexity becomes inconvenient. Decisions are made about you through files, assessments, and checklists. You stop being someone with a past and a future. You become a case to be processed.

That shift is subtle, but it’s total.

People talk about incarceration as a loss of freedom, but the deeper loss is authorship. When you’re reduced to a number, you are no longer the primary narrator of your own life. Other people decide who you are, what you need, and what success looks like for you.

And that logic doesn’t stop at the cell door.

Inside facilities, people are placed into programs that are supposed to rehabilitate them. Anger management. Substance abuse. Cognitive restructuring. Reentry readiness. On the surface, these programs promise growth. Underneath, many of them teach something else entirely.

They teach performance.

I sat in enough groups to know the script. When asked about my crime, lead with accountability. When discussing anger, cite the trigger-response model. When talking about the future, mention family and employment. Hit the marks, avoid the red flags, and you move through the system. Transformation is optional. Compliance is not.

Most people inside know this. They're not stupid. They understand the game. So they play it.

I did it too.

That’s the part most reform conversations avoid. The system doesn’t just fail people by being under-resourced or poorly designed. It actively trains people to survive it by pretending. And pretending becomes a habit.

When release comes, the number is technically gone. You’re no longer a DIN. But the mindset remains.

You leave custody still operating under supervision logic. Waiting for instructions. Anticipating consequences. Making decisions based on avoiding trouble rather than building direction. You’re free, but you’re still managed internally.

This is survival mode.

Survival mode is efficient. It keeps you alert. It helps you adapt quickly. But it is not generative. It does not help you plan long-term. It does not help you take ownership. It does not help you design a future.

This is why so many people cycle back into systems they were desperate to leave. Not because they lack intelligence or effort, but because no one ever taught them how to shift from being managed to being self-directed.

The unspoken truth is this: most systems are not designed to produce independent thinkers. They are designed to produce manageable outcomes. Predictability is valued more than growth. Stability is valued more than power.

Once you see that, a lot of things make sense.

It explains why so many programs feel disconnected from real life. Why people can complete every requirement and still feel unprepared. Why “success” inside doesn’t always translate to success outside.

CTG was born from that realization. Not as an abstract theory, but as a lived response to a system that taught compliance without authorship.

The real question was never how to get out.

The real question was what happens after the number disappears. Who do you become when no one is telling you who to be? And how do you build something when your entire training taught you to wait, react, and perform?

It took years to answer that. Years to go from one government number to another. From DIN to EIN.

Read Part II