[tpoacher]

Sorry to hear about your situation. It really sucks.

I don't have a specific answer to your question, but a couple of stray thoughts:

1. You could attempt to find an open source project of interest to you, and start contributing, make yourself part of the community, make some friends so to speak. If/when you later confide your secret, you're already known and proven yourself to the community, and will probably be received in a much more positive light.

Not sure where that leads you, but a network is always useful. Maybe you can raise money and get paid to maintain that software. Maybe your community will endorse you to your new employers.

2. You are more likely to be employed in projects that involve the penal system, in which case your handicap turns itself on its head, and becomes "insider experience". I've seen many startups and charities relating to this. Perhaps there's an ML project out there in this topic that would greatly benefit from your insight.

[talolard]

Keeping with the theme of insider experience, you might want to reach out for companies doing auditing, fraud detection etc. A domain expert who knows ML is a hot find

[throwaway301010]

Yes, penal system rehabilitation projects is good suggestion. People do that, and it may be possible to do a UK cons-to-coders ML project (there was one in the US). I've seen people on HN cast doubts on OS projects as a portfolio approach but it's worth contemplating.

[tpoacher]

In case this is of further interest, the big issue mentioned two social enterprises that are ex-convict themed and employ ex-convicts.

Working chance, and The Skill Mill