San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

What’s really needed are paths to good jobs

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To stop the revolving door between poverty and incarceration, the more than 70 million Americans who are justice-involved need access to employment that allows self-perpetuating sustainability.

When people come home from prison or jail, they face immense challenges, not the least of which is stigma, and the burden that a criminal record places on people’s ability to find safe, secure housing and gainful employment.

While millions of philanthropic dollars pour each year into reentry and job training programs — which are necessary for people in the short-term — we need to do more to address the long-term impacts of incarceration on the perpetual cycle of poverty.

This includes investing in skill-building that begins inside of prison.
Take my friend Kenny B for example. Kenny has been home and working for six years and still cannot afford healthcare or his own apartment because he works at a low-skilled job.

Despite his efforts to care for himself and his loved ones, Kenny remains reliant on government social services and charities — some of which are funded by philanthropic dollars.

As a newcomer to philanthropy and a former entrepreneur, it hasn’t taken long for me to conclude that attention to policy reform, however necessary, has been insufficient if we are truly to dismantle the systems that create and perpetuate the twin cycles of poverty and mass incarceration.

We have, for example, witnessed how campaigns like “Ban the Box” can serve to distract us from the structural underpinnings of inequality in the workplace for Black and Hispanic men.

Instead, we should be creating paths to employment and entrepreneurship which create self-sufficiency in fulfilling their needs indefinitely while building social and economic equity.

Expanding support for programs like The Last Mile, which teaches computer coding to incarcerated people, and the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, which offers leadership training and a six-month, in-prison “mini-MBA” program, have much greater impact and outcomes than many programs administered post-incarceration.

These programs provide support and mentorship after people are released and — because they are private — they function outside of government bureaucracy.

I know how difficult it is to reenter the workforce after prison. I also know the value of learning skills while in prison that can provide near seamless reentry into society.

I spent two years learning to code while serving a 12-year sentence at San Quentin State Prison.

The skills I learned not only paved a path to near-instantaneous employment when I was released but also provided enough compensation to provide the resources I needed to thrive post-incarceration.

There are another 2.2 million people languishing in prisons and jails, most of whom will return to their communities. They will need jobs, housing, and healthcare, and most will have to navigate the daunting aspects of reentry without the professional skills required to pursue employment compensation that will raise them and their families out of poverty.

To move formerly incarcerated people out of poverty, we must reduce reliance on job readiness and training programs post-incarceration that are solely administered and funded by the government — and, we must work to improve these programs and their outcomes, and push to remove the red tape that makes the reentry process difficult to navigate. Instead, we should fund and support job training and entrepreneurship programs for people that begin while they are incarcerated.

We also need to change the narrative that incarcerated people are incapable of learning and performing in high-skilled jobs. High-skilled employment not only provides income and stability, it also enables an individual to gain equity in homeownership, to access health care, and to pay college tuition.

Having equity lifts people out of poverty and brings self-perpetuating, intergenerational sustainability.

Death Row lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson tells us that “The opposite of poverty is justice.” Until system-impacted people attain true economic freedom, they will remain “have nots” and suffer all of the systemic injustices that come along with being poor — including incarceration.

Aly Tamboura is a manager in the Criminal Justice Reform program at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. He joined the organization in 2017, after working as a software engineer. Having spent over a decade of his life incarcerated, Tamboura brings both his firsthand experience with the criminal justice system and his strong technical skills to CZI to help advance critical reforms

S.Q. News Photographer Heads Out the Gate

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Javier Jiménez, the San Quentin News (SQN) staff photographer for the last 18 months, ended his eight-year prison journey on March 16 when he became a returning citizen.

“I never thought my criminality would end—and to get a new start while being at San Quentin, it’s unbelievable,” said the returning husband and father of a son.

Jiménez credits SQN with allowing him to “get back in touch with the passion (photography) I have loved for 23 years.”

Jiménez is an example of CDCR Secretary Ralph Diaz’s new mission statement:

“To facilitate the successful reintegration of the individuals in our care back to their communities equipped with the tools to be drug-free, healthy, and employable members of society by providing education, treatment, rehabilitative and restorative justice programs, all in a safe and humane environment.”

Before leaving, Jimenez talked with the San Quentin News. The self-taught photographer said, “I feel lucky and, just as important, [I] came through under pressure for the newspaper. I was in the right place at the right time. I knew [previous photographer] Eddie Herena was leaving and knew the editor-in-chief, Jesse Vasquez. I put my resumé in, and it, the resumé, only showed my ambition to better myself and the News team hired me.”

Jiminez reminisced about his favorite photo shoot. “My favorite photo shoot was my very first one—The Queens of the Stone Age. The Warden was there, I met Lieutenant Robinson, and someone said, “Here, turn on the camera.” Smiling, he said, “That’s a lot of pressure.”

The staff photographer shoots two to three hundred shots per event. Jimenez evaluated his own work, saying, “I was not good at first, but have gotten much better with more access to the camera.”

From the artistic side, Jimenez leaves words of wisdom for the next photographer(s). “You’ll get thrown in, so read about the basics and it better flow—either you have the passion to improve in any craft or occupation or you don’t. My improvement came from knowing I was working with a national newspaper that was paying me to learn—and I am getting better because I have that passion to improve.”

One of the mainstays in the SQN office, he stabilized the crew with a daily dose of humor and wisdom from “real talk.” Jiménez looked at every day he spent in the newsroom as “comical—like stand-up comedy,” and left a remembrance of each “family member” of the staff:

  • Marcus “Wali” Henderson, editor-in chief, is a “laid back person who loves to write.”
  • Juan Haines, senior editor, is the “smooth argumentative grandpa.”
  • Kevin Sawyer, associate editor, is “meticulously organized and a great writer.”
  • Joe Garcia, the Journalism Guild chairperson, he sarcastically called “the weirdest personal trainer I’ve ever met.”
  • David Ditto, circulation manager, is “always looking at the positive aspects of EVERYTHING.”
  • Charles Crowe, staff writer, has “an undercover sense of humor I love.”
  • Heriberto Arredondo, staff writer,  “will have big shoes to fill when Juan Espinosa leaves.”
  • Anthony Caravalho, staff writer:  “You took a lot of ‘stuff’ from us and you keep coming back—hope to do business with you on the outside.”
  •  Juan Espinosa, layout designer and leader of Wall City’s Spanish edition, he credits as “the most important representative of the 35-45% of incarcerated Hispanic people. “Juan is my genius brother that claims he is not a genius, but I know better.”
  • Richard “Bonaru” Richardson, executive editor, is “my brother with like-minded aspirations who deserves to go home.”

Jimenez’s own aspirations are to live where he can afford to buy land, and to build a nice home for his family while keeping them safe. If he can own a photo studio or fall back on his construction talents upon his return to society, he will be satisfied going home to the family he loves.

Executive Editor Richard Richardson said the news group will depend on Jiménez’s support for photographs from outside stories the group is developing. Currently Jiménez hopes to follow his predecessor, Eddie Herena, who is working with Wall City, while he considers offers to be staff photographer for a local nonprofit called “Through The Bars.”

“To make a living out of my passion (photography) is the most enjoyable thing I was allowed to do in prison, and if I can carry it beyond the walls of San Quentin I would consider myself very fortunate,” said the SQ News photographer. “Hopefully I can continue capturing people’s attention with pictures—that is my goal.

“I remember at DVI eight years ago, I read all about the programs at San Quentin and hoped to get there.” For those aspiring to join the nation’s #1 news outlet on social reform, he added, “I think the paper allows you to hone skills while in prison, especially if you can write. I mean, where else can you be consistently published and be around people who carry weight in the justice system on a daily basis? It’s just unheard of,” said Jiménez.

Monday morning March 16 upon his release, you could have found “Javy” at the nearest taco truck before he went home to continue another passion he has not done for eight years—cooking enchiladas for his family.

Marin’s Chief Probation Officer focuses on restorative justice

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Marin County Chief Probation Officer Mike Daly

Mike Daly, the chief probation officer in Marin County, believes in restorative justice, something he’s put into practice instead of talking about it.

During an interview with SQ News in January, Daly discussed pro-social thinking and how to “rewire’ people to be the best they can be after becoming involved in the criminal justice system.

“I want people to know that restorative justice does work, and there’s data to prove it,” said Daly. “It should be part of a forward thinking criminal justice system.”

To successfully undertake restorative justice as a model, he said, there has to be input from district attorneys, victims, offenders and other stakeholders.

In Marin County, “Cases are referred to the probation department for restorative justice only after being cleared by the Marin County District Attorney’s Office and the Marin County Public Defender’s Office,” the Marin Independent Journal reported

For three years, Daly’s office has been innovative in its approach to criminal justice.

“I think I’m the first in Marin to hire someone to do restorative justice,” he said. “We offer that if the victim is okay with it. We want to be careful not to re-victimize…”

Citing some of the failures mass incarceration has produced over the last 30 years, Daly said a change in the culture of corrections needs to take place as well. He acknowledged the increase in California’s prison population didn’t happen overnight but said the legislature was asleep at the wheel for two decades.

Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened in the United States every 10 days,” wrote Bryan Stevenson, attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, in his book Just Mercy. “Prison growth and the resulting ‘prison-industrial complex’ – the business interests that capitalize on prison construction – made imprisonment so profitable that millions of dollars were spent lobbying state legislators…”

“We didn’t examine or make adjustments,” Daly said of the years California’s recidivism rate was at 70%.

He said it was there for a long time, and every year the state budget kept going up. Eventually a federal three-judge panel stepped in.

When that happened, the courts instructed California to reduce and maintain its state prison population at a cap of 137.5% of design capacity in order to deliver adequate medical care to all inmates.

Shortly thereafter, in 2011, California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 109, Public Safety Realignment, and implemented it to manage the state’s unprecedented growth in its prison population.

Other significant reforms followed in California’s criminal justice landscape. Changes in the law such as Proposition 57 are changing the situation, he said, while admitting it’s not perfect, “but it’s a start.”

Daly said he’s worked with Ralph Diaz, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

They’ve established a Skype program that allows inmates headed for post-release community supervision (PRCS) to communicate with their probation officer before leaving state prison.

Daly was president of the Chief Probation Officers of California in 2014. According to the Marin County Probation Department website, “(former) Governor Brown had placed a tremendous amount of responsibility on the shoulders of probation departments across the state. You don’t do that unless you have trust and confidence in your partners.”

Daly said he felt that trust.

“We will work with Governor Newsom and hopefully create the same trusting bond that we had with Governor Brown,” the probation department website states.

“We’re not a ‘lock ‘em up county,’” said Daly. “I’m happy that Marin has adjusted to Realignment very well.”

He said all of its criminal justice leaders who voted to allocate funding feel that strong rehabilitative programs are the best for public safety.

Assembly Bill 109 provides funding for many of Marin County’s support systems such as finding shelter for those on probation.

“We will pay for that free, for the first six months,” said Daly.

Daly noted that Senate Bill 678 also provides funding for programs that offset prison.

“This bill was introduced around 2008, and it’s still active today,” he said.

The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program also funds Daly’s restorative justice service, the Independent Journal reported. Daly stressed that defendants who participate in this program are less likely to reoffend.

Daly was appointed as Chief Probation Officer in 2009 by the Board of Supervisors, but confessed he wasn’t ready to deal with the politics that came with the job. Since Realignment, the management of lower-level prisoners was shifted from the state prison and parole system to the county jail and probation system.

To promote justice, Daly said “We’re proposing that the age of jurisdiction for juveniles be 18 to 19,” citing the science behind brain development and the foundational reasoning that the brain is still in a stage of development between the ages 18 and 25.

“We all have our points of change,” said Daly. “What I’m trying to develop [in them] is intrinsic motivation. Sometimes guys don’t care about themselves so it’s hard to make those changes. When you make that move intrinsically you have a much higher likelihood of being successful.”

“I’ve seen guys who’ve turned the corner,” said Daly, adding “Extrinsic motivation doesn’t work on guys from the hood. You have much more success when you develop intrinsic motivation.”

Daly said statewide, 8% of those on PRCS violate their probation and return to prison, but in Marin County the number is 2%. “We’re considered a high performing county,” he said.

In 1990, Daly received his bachelor’s degree from Cal Poly in Social Science with a concentration in criminal justice—the same year he started his career with Marin Probation. In 1999 he earned a master’s degree in public administration from Golden Gate University.

“I’m super proud about (restorative justice) and I’m looking to expand,” said Daly. “I’d like people to know that we are the first department in California solely to conduct restorative justice for offender and victim. I’m pretty proud of the footprint we have in Marin.”

Newsom proposes reducing probation and boosting rehabilitation programs

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Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom talking with Juan Haines
Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom talking with Juan Haines

Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing major changes in California’s criminal justice system by reducing probation to two years and boosting rehabilitation programs for offenders.

Newsom said the change is aimed at cutting costs and reducing recidivism.

He said he proposes spending “an unprecedented amount of money” — $210 million over four years – in rehabilitation programs early in the probation period, where they are believed most effective, The Associated Press reported Jan. 11.

The plan sets probation at a maximum of two years, down from five for felonies and three for misdemeanors.Probation officers support the change but police chiefs are opposed.

Longer probation terms allow officers to search offenders, their homes and vehicles to find drugs, weapons, stolen items or other evidence, said Ron Lawrence, president of the California Police Chiefs Association. According to him, this tends to reduce crimes.

Lawrence said his group opposes changes that would lessen accountability. “Lessening the tail on probation would frankly lessen that accountability.”

Support is voiced by the Chief Probation Officers of California. The group agrees that focusing on rehabilitative services is the best way to help change their behavior and reduce re-offense.”

“The data and the evidence and the science bears out,” Newsom said. “You front load services – those first 18 months are determinative. He said the change was prompted by a major increase in car burglaries following passage of a proposition that reclassified some felonies as misdemeanors.

“This goes directly to the car break-ins, this goes to the petty crime issue, this should be celebrated by the law enforcement community because of the intensity of services we want to provide,” Newsom said.

Longer duration of supervision not only costs money,” he said, “For small petty things you throw people back in the system and that cycle of violence perpetuates itself.”

The reform group Californians for Safety and Justice points out that ten times as many offenders are sentenced to probation than to prison but probation receives only a fraction of the funding.

No housing for returning citizens in California

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California released a record numbers of prisoners without an appropriate place for them to go. Often, the formerly incarcerated are put in programs that offer no real help for the problems they face.

The parole board grants parole, but a prisoner must show that he or she has a place to stay upon release; 80% of those released are placed in state funded or philanthropically supported transitional housing, according to an article in Mother Jones.

People are placed in drug programs when they don’t have drug problems and wind up living in conditions that resemble those in prison, reported Marissa Endicott.

Terah Lawyer, after 15 years in prison needed to show the parole board she had a place to stay upon release. She had already secured a job working for the California Coalition of Women Prisoners.

Her reentry placement turned out to be a drug treatment facility with strict schedules and restrictions requiring her to attend treatment classes that she did not need. In fact, she had become a certified drug counselor while in prison.

She had to delay starting her new job for 90 days due to the program’s restrictions..

“The whole process of transitioning was hindered and stalled. It handicapped me in in certain areas because I didn’t have that immediate exposure I needed to see what life was like out there,” Lawyer told Endicott.

Thousands of parolees are released each year, with stable housing being critical to their future success. Problems occur when home owners are reluctant to rent to them or allow placement of transitional housing in their neighborhood.

Few appropriate reentry options exist for those who have served long sentences, increasing the chance of former prisoners soon becoming homeless.

California is ground zero for this problem due to its lack of affordable housing. In the midst of criminal justice reform, California’s prison population has dropped by 25%. New reform laws implemented are putting more people back on the streets.

Between 2017 and 2018 there was a 7% increase in the number of lifers released, 25% increase in 3-strikes releases, a 48% increase in releases for people who were serving life without the possibility of parole, and 50% increase in releases for those who were once sentenced to death, according to Mother Jones.

It is a crisis within a crisis: the special housing needs of people released from prison while an affordable housing crisis spreads across the state. Crystal Wheeler, served 22 years, struggling with trauma issues from the years spent in prison and the mental and physical abuse by her husband.

With no family, her parole conditions mandated she stay in a re-entry housing program, a six-month program in Claremont Calif., which specialized in drug and alcohol treatment.

Despite her never having a drug or alcohol problem, Wheeler was forced to attend daily AA meetings at 6 a.m. “That time could have been better used for teaching us things that our husbands never let us do,” she said.

The department of corrections acknowledges shortcomings in re-entry housing and has a policy to reduce the number of people without drug problems ending up in drug treatment centers.

In 2016 the state allocated $10 million for re-entry services for people who had served long sentences, starting a six-month transitional housing program the following year.

By 2018, CDCR’s long term transitional housing had produced 257 facility beds. But, the demand continues to grow. According to Mother Jones, 902 people were paroled in 2014 and an estimated 20,500 long term incarcerated people will be up for a parole hearing in the next 10 years.

Film producer and social justice activist Scott Budnick visits San Quentin

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Scott-Budnick

Film producer and social justice activist Scott Budnick kicked it with youth offenders and spoke to Kid-CAT members about his efforts to put the human face on America’s broken criminal justice system.

“This is my favorite group in the whole state,” said the famed producer of The Hangover and the recently released Just Mercy. “It’s good to be back here.”

Budnick slid into San Quentin for a couple of hours Dec. 12 before heading to Folsom State Prison, where the Sacramento Kings were set to christen a renovated basketball court for Play For Justice.

“I’ve been coming to Kid-CAT for years,” Budnick said as he looked around at about 30 prisoners in SQ Education’s B-Building. “I literally don’t recognize anyone—only a couple of faces.

“It’s nuts. Everyone in KidCAT’s going home.”

Budnick came that day with longtime SQ volunteer Ayoola Mitchell to speak with and meet youth offenders who may have heard of him but have never seen him face-to-face.

New KidCAT member Rafael Bravo, 28, introduced Budnick to the room.

“People say, ‘Who the hell is Scott?’ Well, I’ve known him since I was 16,” said Bravo. “If anyone in the world believed in me, it’s this man right here.

“He appeared one day when I was in YA [Youth Authority]. ‘Are you Rafael? Your cousin told me to come find you.’”

Bravo told everyone how Budnick eventually got him a job on a movie set.

“He offered me the best of opportunities I could possibly have,” said Bravo. “But I wasn’t right.”

Bravo ended up committing second degree murder and being sentenced to 16-years-to-life.

“While we’re incarcerated, this is the time to get right with ourselves right now,” said Bravo. “We have to be there for each other and lift each other up.”

Budnick then explained to the guys about his experiences seeing the inequities of the criminal justice system firsthand.

“When I was working on Old School, a friend of mine took me with him to Juvenile Hall. We volunteered for Inside Out Writers, working with a group of 10 kids—all facing life sentences.”

Budnick recalled asking one of the young men how their week had been. “‘It was a bad week,’ the kid told me. He said he’d just got sentenced to 300-years-to-life. ‘They stacked everything—I got washed.’

“And, this kid looked like he was 11. I thought, ‘Oh, they’ll have a good time with him in prison. This is awful.’”

That was one moment Budnick says changed his perspective, changed his life. “How do I live in a country that would do this to a child?

“I could not comprehend in my mind how we, as a country, think this is okay. Our system’s so incredibly racist and unfair. There’s like no White kids in Juve- nile Hall.”

Budnick related it to his own children. “My kid would get bailed out, have the best attorney money can buy and get a deal no one could have gotten.

“If you have money, you’re not going to get washed. I couldn’t just teach a writing class and feel like I’m giving back.”

Budnick went on to found the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) in 2013, an organization committed to offering guidance and help to the incarcerated and recently released, as well as advocating fiercely to affect policy change.

“Getting laws passed, we’re 4 for 4 so far, with Governor Newsom,” Bud- nick said. “And, I think we were like 13 for 13 with Governor Brown.

“Our policy work through ARC, that’s all done by you guys—because you guys are up there on Capitol Hill telling your stories.”

Budnick talked about how the lessons he’s learned as a filmmaker tie into affecting social change.

“Conflict, struggle, a happy ending — that’s what makes a great story, a great film,” he said. “And you guys have some of the most powerful stories on earth.

“No matter who I bring into prison, everyone changes when they meet you guys and see you as human beings.”

According to Budnick, it’s all about being able to humanize the incarcerated through storytelling.

“There’s such a beautiful light inside all of you,” he said. “That’s the lesson. Talking about you guys as human beings got voters to say ‘Yes.’

“The criminal justice system’s all about scare tactics. Think about that — we just need to make sure juries aren’t scared, right?”

Budnick is intent on using his Hollywood platform and success to illuminate the human faces stuck behind the walls of mass incarceration.

With Black Panther and Creed star Michael B. Jordan, Budnick produced Just Mercy, the film version of Bryan Stevenson’s nonfiction account of freeing Walter McMillian, a wrongfully convicted prisoner on Alabama’s Death Row.

McMillian spent years on Death Row due to a conviction based solely on the testimony of a jailhouse informant. And although his jury sentenced him to life, the trial judge intervened and ordered a death sentence.

Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) to fight for people like Mc- Millian.

“The entire movie is about humanizing all the people on Death Row,” said Budnick. “There’s a pretty graphic execution scene in there, where we show it all.

“By the time the audience gets to that point in the film, we know the guy’s guilty — but they all cry when he’s put to death.”

In conjunction with Just Mercy’s January release dates, Budnick explained how he and Warner Bros. partnered to launch Represent Justice, “the largest political social impact campaign for a movie — ever.”

“We’re using our social media to send people to websites on criminal justice reform,” he said. “They’ll be able to see Juvenile Hall information where they can go volunteer.

“We want to try and immediately activate people—engage them to get in- volved.”

Budnick also expressed his excitement for Play For Justice, where the Sacramento Kings, Milwaukee Bucks and other NBA partners are visiting prisons to interact with incarcerated communities, bringing them basketball — and hope.

“I’m driving from here straight to Folsom,” he told the SQ guys. “Some people might think basketball fans don’t know anything about criminal justice — we’re go- ing to change all that.”

Ayoola Mitchell spoke about how she first crossed paths with Budnick. “I met Scott four years ago, when we both were speaking before the Legislature in Sacramento.”

“It really struck me, because, you know, I was dressed all in my adult clothes,” said Mitchell. “But him—I swear he had flip flops on and was there to address public officials just like I was.

“Something Scott said that day really resonated with me. He said, ‘I just don’t give a f–k.’ Me, as a Black woman—how I look matters. When I go in there, I know I’ll be judged.”

Budnick chuckled slightly. “Everyone already sees me as ‘the Hangover guy,’ so I can get away with it.”

Mitchell continued. “A few years later, I was visiting the ARC offices in Los An- geles. It’s all about that six degrees of separation—the way people’s live intersect.

“There was a guy who’d gotten out and was working for Scott, a guy I’d known since he was 16 in Juvenile Hall,” she said. “He told me he was going to the Oscars that year.

“I’m like, ‘I’ve never been to the Oscars. What about me?’”

Mitchell’s career in criminal justice reform spans more than 38 years, and running. “I’ve been fighting for y’all before some of you were even born,” she said. “So much needs to be done out there.

“I have such a heart for you guys.”

Budnick asked Mitchell what organizations she works for. “It’s just me—Ayoola. No non-profit. No organization,” she said. “I’ve always believed in redemption.

“I’m old as Hell, but I can’t retire until all y’all are free.” Budnick commended Mitchell for her continued effort and passion, particularly since she does it mostly on her own without all the fundraising and support networks he has access to. “It’s easy for me to do this work,” he said.
Some of the SQ guys had questions about what kind of reentry support ARC provides once they’re released.

“We got you,” said Budnick. “You’ll have a very stable place to live and people around you who care. If that keeps you up at night or gives you pause, don’t worry about it.”

A big question was about getting Budnick involved in spreading KidCAT’s First Step curriculum to other facilities.

“The model that was started here—that should be at High Desert, at these hopeless places,” he said. “There’s what, like 35 prisons in California?

“Your program should be available at all of them— anywhere there’s youth offenders looking for hope.”

Executive forms organization to help officials curb recidivism

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A top Google executive has formed a non-profit organization to help prison officials understand which programs work and don’t work to curb recidivism.

“In the criminal justice system today–an incredibly large and important and impactful system–we have none of those same abilities. It’s millions of lives, billions of dollars, and we don’t have a good sense of what’s working or a good way to set goals and hit them,” said Clementine Jacoby, who left her job as product manager for Google in June to work on criminal justice reform.

Jacoby cofounded Recidiviz in order to use data analytics to solve problems in the criminal justice arena.

“At Google, we had experimentation frameworks to determine which versions of a change would have the greatest impact, and when we rolled out a change, we could predict what it should do and monitor if it actually hit that goal,” said Jacoby in the Fast Company story.

A Bureau of Justice Statistics report in 2019 revealed that America had 2.2 million people in either jail or prison at the end of 2017, the article stated.

This number has been in decline over the last decade, but America still has more people incarcerated than any other country in the world does.

Recidiviz is now working with five states. “The people who are actually running criminal justice systems are already motivated to decarcerate for a whole variety of reasons-either their system may be over-crowded and they don’t know exactly what the best strategies are to get a handle on that, or they’re getting legislative pressure and advocacy pressure to downsize.”

Some tech companies already work in this space, making money without reducing the prison population. That is why Recidiviz decided to go non-profit, Jacoby said.

Recidiviz is the only non-profit at the tech accelerator Y Combinator and has plans to expand to more states, sharing the technology.

“Everything that we build is open-source. And so part of the theory of change is, can we get this technology out there, so that domain experts in the space can use this infrastructure to support states in doing data-driven decision making?” noted Fast Company.

The Fast Company article said that the data analysis also looks at how specific populations are helped by each program, so that programs can be better tailored. Ultimately, Jacoby said she hopes that reduced incarceration rates will allow money saved to go to- ward successful rehabilitation programs instead.

“You can actually start to shift the system from punitive to rehabilitative,” Jacoby said.

Attorneys' preparedness for parole hearings under review

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Changes are underway to correct attorney preparedness and performance at parole board hearings for men and women serving life sentences in California, according to a survey by Life Support Alliance (LSA).

“We don’t represent this as a conclusive survey, an empirical study of great depth or precise scientific analysis,” LSA stated in its newsletter, Lifer-Line, “but it is interesting and definitely shows some trends and areas of concern.”

LSA reported that more than half of the prisoners who responded to the survey said they “didn’t feel the attorney was prepared to represent them” at their parole board hearing. The reason given was largely because of “the lack of time spent with the client” and reviewing the client’s file.

“Prisoners report that attorneys often meet with them only once prior to the day of the hearing, sometimes only a few days before the hearing, rarely more than the requisite 45 days,” LSA reported. “And those meetings are usually less than 20 minutes, often as brief as 10 minutes.”

During a public comment period at the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) executive board meeting in September, the conclusion of the survey was reported to the BPH at its executive board.

The informal survey presented issues of concern to prisoners serving life sentences. For example, “73% of those responding to the survey were denied parole at their hearing,” LSA reported. It also reported 26% of hearings resulted in findings of parole suitability, and that 1% of the hearings were stipulations to unsuitability, waivers or continuances.

“A prisoner may request to voluntarily waive his or her life parole consideration hearing for any reason, the California Code of Regulations, Title 15, Div. 2, § 2253. “Requests shall be made in writing to the board and shall state the reason for the request.”

According to the LSA survey, a lot of the state appointed attorneys who represent prisoners at Board hearings are unprepared and arrive at hearings without required forms and documents mailed to them by their clients. Some attorneys even admit they did not have time to properly prepare or are overburdened with other cases. There are also attorneys “unfamiliar with some of the finer points of parole hearings.” According to LSA, one attorney told a client “I dropped the ball.”

“About a third of the time inmates reported their attorneys, always appointed, recommended they stipulate to unsuitability,” LSA reported, adding that it was troubled by what appears to be an “upswing in this trend,” and that some attorneys advised clients to stipulate “after meeting alone with commissioners.”

LSA did not say, however, that all Board appointed attorneys were ineffective. In fact, “…one state appointed (attorney) got 80% thumbs up rating, spending an average of 90 minutes with her clients,” it was reported.

At least one attorney “told his client to just say what the panel wanted to hear, regardless of whether or not it was the truth,” according to LSA. “We believe the phrase for that behavior is suborning perjury.”

The survey said some private attorneys were no better: for example some of these attorneys who were not prepared or effective were simply not informed. These were attorneys that LSA said were apparently new to parole hearings.Those attorneys probably came from prisoners’ families hiring a “friendly attorney.”

In response to the poor representation, BPH Executive Director Jennifer Shafer, has drafted a new program for state appointed attorneys to better serve their clients. LSA outlined some of the goals of the new program:

• Strengthen the attorney client relationship

• Modifying time frames

• Increasing compensation (pay) to attorneys

For example, under the new program, once an attorney is “hired” by the BPH, he or she will be required to meet with the client within 30 days. A second meeting is required about two weeks before the board hearing.

Compensation will increase from $400 to $750 per client. “And there is a real selection process in the works,” LSA reported, “…not just apply and be lucky at the lottery selection used in past years.”

According to LSA, the BPH will also be working with the Parole and Justice Education Project at Southern California’s Post Conviction Justice Project (PJEP) which “will provide legal training, review and reporting and create what has been termed ‘reasonable expectations of representation.’”

“It bears noting that we do not believe any particular attorney can achieve a grant of suitability for an unprepared inmate, no matter how good the attorney,” LSA stated in its newsletter. “Nor can an inept attorney sink the chances of a well-prepared inmate.”

Ice cream company allies with criminal justice reform

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By Alfred King, Journalism Guild Writer

Ben & Jerry’s has announced a new ice cream flavor in support of criminal justice reform, “Justice Remix’d.”

B&J, well known for its social activism, launched a new flavor chocolate ice cream coupled with gobs of cinnamon bun dough and spicy fudge brownie to “spotlight structural racism in a broken criminal justice system,” reported The Independent article.

“Our approach to creating social change is to raise up the work nonprofits are doing on the ground,” said co-founder Ben Cohen. “We bring every resource we have to support them — our business voice, our connection with fans, our Scoop Shop community and, of course, ice cream. Somehow, it’s easier to talk about difficult issues over a scoop or two.”

B&J has partnered with the Advancement Project to bring forth changes in the criminal justice arena, now working to close The Workhouse jail in St. Louis, the Sept. 4 story said.

Blacks make up 90% of the people held in jail but make up less than 50% of the population in St. Louis, a HuffPost story reported. Many cannot afford bail.

“Our country needs to invest in services that build up communities rather than those that tear them down,” Executive Director Judith Browne Dianis of the Advancement Project told The Independent.

“That means ending a wealth-based pretrial detention system that locks people up because they are poor, Black or Brown. It means dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, divesting from criminalizing students and investing in the creation of high quality education and services. It’s time to reimagine safety and justice.” commented Mike Pomranz in a Food&Wine article.

In October 2018 B&J released “Pecan Resist” in protest of Pres. Donald Trump, reported The Independent.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the new flavor will go to support the Advancement Project work in criminal justice reform, noted the HuffPost article.

Ice cream lovers can purchase pints of Justice Remix’d at Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops, many grocery stores, and Scoop Trucks deployed to various cities. Free scoops have been passed out in St. Louis and Miami, according to Pomranz.

The Homecoming Project

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Where returning citizens find a warm welcome in the homes of local residents

People with room for a boarder are helping provide housing for some former California prisoners.

The Homecoming program was launched in 2018 in Alameda County to provide formerly incarcerated people places to live — with plans to expand across the United States.

“For people getting out of prison, the penalty hasn’t ended and reentry is its own obstacle course that everybody has to navigate; and housing is essential to being able to get through that obstacle course,” said Alex Busansky, a former prosecutor and president of Impact Justice told NPR.

“If you don’t have a place to sleep, to shower, to keep your things, it’s very difficult to think about doing anything else,”

The project provided housing for 12 ex-prisoners since August 2018, according to November/December article in Mother Jones.

People recently released from long-term custody were connected with homeowners willing to rent them a room for up to six months. Hosts are paid $25 a day, with no cost to former inmates.

Hosts and potential tenants undergo a rigorous screening process. The goal is to create a positive living environment.

Sabina Crocette is now host to her second participant.

Her first, DeLora, 32, served eight years for conspiracy to distribute heroin.

“I just saw her as a dynamic young woman who could come back into the community and be a great resource to others,” Crocette told KPIX.” You have to recognize people’s humanity. People are not the thing they have done. That is not who they are.”

Crocette, a civil rights attorney working with prisoner rights organizations, met her second tenant, London Croudy, before she moved into her townhouse.

Croudy served eight years of a 13-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute heroin. She was released to a half-way house in Oakland operated by GEO Group, a for-profit organization.

There she had to share a room with several other people, the food and the beds were the same as when she was in prison, with an hour for recreation.

“Just pretty much a step over incarceration,” she said. “Still walking around with fear.”

Everything changed when she moved in with Crocette. Thinking she might be sleeping on the floor, she saw her own bedroom with a queen-size bed and a dresser dotted with fake candles. “This peace just came over me,” Croudy said.

The Bay Area is a hard place for people returning from custody to find a place to live with its absurdly overpriced housing, Mother Jones noted.

Terah Lawyer, a Homecoming Project program manager, said applicants have told her that they’d be happy to sleep in a box in someone’s backyard. “They will settle for less because they think that they deserve less.”

She knows the challenges first hand. After serving 15 years in prison, she was placed in a residential treatment facility in San Francisco where she had to attend substance abuse classes weekly even though she did not have a substance abuse problem.

In fact, at the time she was a certified drug and alcohol counselor able to facilitate the groups she had to attend.

Lawyer used this experience to shape the programs at the Homecoming Project to encourage independence while offering support.

Sholly Kehinee, 30, scheduled for parole from San Quentin in five months, said “I had no place of residency. But I got word of the Homecoming Project and because of them, it’s gonna be possible after seven years.” He hopes it will aid his reunion with his son.

—By Alfred King

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