Prisoner compensated for loss of work

I love this: the authorities in North Carolina have settled with an author, currently residing in one of their places of correction, over the loss of a novel he had been writing. It seems that the work he had been writing in prison was taken from him and destroyed. They have reportedly paid him $10,000, which many struggling novelists would regard as beyond the dreams of avarice were they to be offered it as an advance.
If it was half as good as this prison literature - and who knows? it could be rubbish, it could be great - it will have been worth the advance. I doubt it's that good, but he's written a few books already and readers seem to like them ...