[6] He spent many years incarcerated in both the New York and Massachusetts prison systems and came to the attention of neurologist Abraham Myerson[6] and penologist Thomas Mott Osborne for his potential as a writer.

[6] He was incarcerated twice in the Portsmouth Naval Prison—punishment for his absence without leave[6]—where he met and worked as an office clerk for then prison commander Thomas Mott Osborne.

[6] He cycled in and out of various New York and Massachusetts prisons from 1920 to 1932, spending a total of 12 and a half years incarcerated,[13] primarily for robbery and larceny crimes.

[7] The top of the false coping was too wide for him to grip with his fingers, but he managed to catch it with the crooks of his arms, regain his balance, and then topple over the outer wall to drop 30 feet down to the Boston and Maine railroad tracks, where two brakemen who saw him made no effort to stop him.

[18][7] While in Pennsylvania he took a job selling enlarged photographs—work that he was able to continue doing for his employer as a traveling salesmen when worries about being detected by law enforcement made him eager to leave Pittsburgh—and he briefly stayed in East Liverpool, Ohio, due to interest in a local girl he had encountered on the train.

[6] Throughout his years of incarceration and paroles, Nelson at times struggled with morphia addiction and excessive drinking, and he later published writing giving personal insight into the patterns of drug use and recidivism to which many prisoners fall prey.

[6] Nelson's final prison sentence was from 1930 to 1932, after which he paroled under the supervision of Abraham Myerson,[6][7] though he would have additional encounters with the law in his troubled later years.

[8][23][24][25][26] Progressive prison official Thomas Mott Osborne and neurologist Abraham Myerson both recognized Victor Nelson's potential as a writer.

[27] Nelson also became interested in strengthening his skills in the written form of the Swedish language of his childhood, so he acquired the necessary reference books and practiced by translating Scandinavian stories into English.

[27] Nelson would later publish a piece in The Boston Record in which he would state: "I had always nursed a strong desire to write, and the translating proved to be the accidental means of making me a writer.

"[8] While incarcerated in the Auburn State Prison in New York, Nelson took Columbia University extension courses in writing and began publishing articles on penology.

[30] In 1932, while Nelson was incarcerated in Dedham, Massachusetts, Abraham Myerson approached him and asked him to write something that would help psychiatrists understand how prisoners perceive those in the psychiatry profession.

Even when an occasional warden of a better type, spurred on, it may be, by an able, sincere prison commissioner, becomes a convert to the new faith and desires to lend a hand, he is rarely able to accomplish very much.

Political interference, the opposition of ignorant but well-organized guards, the burdens of administrative detail work, the hostility of prisoners, personal inefficiency through lack of training; all these things render the warden more or less incapable of doing his higher duty toward society and toward the criminal.

In the end, up against these and other difficulties beyond his powers of control, the average warden takes the easiest way out of his dilemma and lapses into a deliberate policy of laissez-faire.

[23] In August 1938 he appeared in Boston Municipal Court and pleaded not guilty to a charge of defrauding a hotel keeper[7][25] and in November 1938 was arrested after getting into an automobile accident on Park Drive and fined $50 by the Roxbury Court for “operating a vehicle under the influence.”[26] On December 8, 1939, at the age of 41, Nelson phoned his wife after leaving home, telling her he intended to leave the state and that he was contemplating taking his own life.

[40] A chemical analysis of the liquids in the liquor bottle and glasses was ordered,[38] and a determination of "barbiturate poisoning, manner not known" was entered into the City of Boston Registry Certificate of Death for Nelson.

[41] Medical examiner William J. Brickley reported that Nelson had told three different people on previous occasions that he intended to take his own life using drugs.