California to expand re-entry programs for formerly incarcerated

As California closes prisons and shifts its focus to rehabilitation, it is expanding programs that help formerly incarcerated people transition back into society.

The state’s Corrections Department is touting its male and female community re-entry programs as among its most successful tools in helping former inmates become self-sufficient after they get out of prison. 

Data cited by the state shows that participation in both programs helped reduce repeat offenses — and could possibly save California some money. 

The women themselves know they face an uncertain future, and while some worry their convictions will make it difficult for them to find jobs, a few recently told CalMatters they’re grateful for the program’s help.

Michaela Twyman, 28, has been incarcerated for about three years, is now in the Female Community Reentry Program, and hopes to get out next summer. 

“Prison was not what I expected,” Twyman said. “There are so many opportunities in prison. They don’t want people to sit around and do nothing.”

Before she landed at the re-entry program, she was at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, where she took part in a labor apprenticeship program. Recently, Twyman completed a vocational training program at St. John’s Program for Real Change, the Sacramento halfway house where she is serving out the rest of her sentence. Shortly afterward, she and six other women from the facility went to a job fair, where they handed their resumes to prospective employers.

The decade-old voluntary re-entry program gives some state inmates the opportunity to serve out the rest of their sentence — anywhere from 60 days to two years — in places with fewer restrictions than prison. Once they complete certain requirements, they can get permission to go offsite for school, work or church. The program at St. John’s currently has 47 participants, including those attending community college and some who are working toward getting their GED diplomas. At least one has graduated from Sacramento State University.

The re-entry programs by the numbers

There are 12 re-entry centers of varied sizes around the state: six that have a total of about 600 male participants, and six with about 375 female participants. The program for men has three facilities in Los Angeles, and one each in Butte, Kern and San Diego counties. Besides Sacramento, the other women’s facilities are in Bakersfield, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Fe Springs and Stockton.

For the 2023 to 2024 fiscal year, California spent almost $112 million on the male re-entry program, and almost $28 million on its female counterpart. For 2024 to 2025, the budget for the program for men is almost $81 million, while the budget for the women’s program will increase to almost $35 million.

The Corrections Department plans to add six more sites for men and has already identified three new locations: One will be in Stockton, while a facility in Fresno is set to open this summer and one in Sacramento is scheduled to open next year. 

California’s prison population is now at about 95,000, and the state projects it will drop to  about 93,000 incarcerated individuals this summer.

The most recent state data shows that California’s recidivism rate fell from 44.6% in fiscal year 2017 to 2018 to 41.9% in fiscal year 2018 to 2019. The state uses conviction rates within three years as its primary measure of recidivism, and arrests and return to prison as supplemental measures.  

In 2021, a Stanford Public Policy study commissioned by the Corrections Department found that Male Community Reentry Program participants who were there for at least nine months saw their likelihood of re-arrest decrease by 13% and their likelihood of reconviction drop by 11%.

The researchers also figured out that two of the programs for men cost taxpayers  less than the average annual cost of incarceration, which now stands at more than $132,000. In the Butte County facility, the average cost per inmate was $48,000 a year, while the average cost per inmate at the Los Angeles County Amity facility was $38,500 a year, according to the study. The researchers recommended that California expand the programs and conduct a more in-depth analysis of the costs and benefits, especially around recidivism.

Mary Xjimenez, a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the agency’s recent research efforts are focused on evaluating its various programs’ effectiveness on recidivism. 

“Our newest data show the effects of the passage of Proposition 57 (which has increased the number of nonviolent inmates eligible for parole), and our determination that education, vocational and cognitive behavioral programming are effective at reducing recidivism,” Xjimenez said in an email. 

She added that the department is looking at preliminary recidivism rates for its parole program called Specialized Treatment Optimized Programming, for individuals released in the fiscal year 2018 to 2019. This examination comes after a CalMatters investigation found that the state was not collecting data on whether participants of that program were finding jobs or going back to prison.

The state’s most recent data about the female re-entry programs, from fiscal year 2015 to 2016, shows that women who participated in it (at the time, it was called Custody to Community Transitional Reentry Program) had lower recidivism rates than female offenders overall: 20.3%.

As for more recent tracking of the female re-entry programs’ results, Xjimenez said 24% of current participants are employed, and 43% are getting education and training. Laura Pierson, the vocational program instructor at St. John’s, said she doesn’t know what happens to her students afterward because she is not allowed to have contact with them after they leave; they are tracked by their parole officers afterward.

Elsa Chen, a professor and chairperson of the political science department at Santa Clara University whose research focus includes criminal justice reform and re-entry from incarceration, said it’s a “great idea” that the state is investing in re-entry programs.

“It’s important to focus on the ability of people to support themselves” after they get out of prison, Chen said. 

The collection and reporting of recidivism data is tricky and inconsistent, the professor added. “It’s important to think a little harder when people are talking about recidivism” because there are so many variables, she said. Among them: How long people are tracked by parole officers after they get out of prison; a parole violation might be because of a technical reason and not necessarily because somebody committed a crime; and the way one jurisdiction defines recidivism may be different from another. 

Chen also said what may be reflected in recidivism data is “not a measure of a person’s behavior after release so much as it is a measure of a person’s interaction with the criminal legal system after release.” 

A closer look at the female re-entry program

The six-week vocational course at St. John’s includes lessons on how to write resumes and cover letters, mock job interviews and more. Pierson said she starts by devoting time to helping the women “find their why.”

Pierson’s classes include about eight to 10 women at a time, so they can all have access to a computer in the small classroom at St. John’s. 

That intimacy has helped the women feel seen and heard.

“Laura taught us how not to be scared,” said Priscilla Ronco, a 39-year-old mother of three who expects to complete her sentence in August. Ronco got emotional as she said a close male relative raped her when she was 7, so she used to feel “I could never trust anybody. But here I learned I don’t have to have a wall.”

Ronco said Pierson’s class helped her realize “you’re never too old to learn new things.” She hopes to find a customer-service representative job when she gets out, though she said her “big fear is my conviction.”

Jenny Salazar, 35, has been incarcerated for 13 years and expects to get out next year. She praised the “California Model” for the “more humane treatment” of those who are incarcerated, which among other things gave her the chance to participate in the re-entry program. 

“To be called Jenny — not Salazar, not a number — made me feel human,” she said of being able to live at St. John’s. There, she and the other women are in a more dorm-like environment. The facility has a huge closet with donated clothing, some of which the women wore to the job fair. The women can hang out in a big backyard. 

In addition, Salazar, who served time at the prison in Chowchilla, has been pursuing a degree in psychology by taking community college classes. “It’s amazing that I can get a degree for free,” she said. That is made possible by the California College Promise Grant, which waives enrollment fees for eligible state residents.  

Margaret Goodliffe, 46, has been incarcerated for two years and expects to complete her sentence in June. She said she suffered a brain injury in 2020 and has had to relearn many things, so the vocational training was useful.

She uses a walker and pretty quickly felt “a little anxiety” while navigating the job fair along with other members of the public. Still, she said she hoped to find a part-time job to supplement disability payments when she gets out. 

Pierson said that in the three-and-a-half years she has been the vocational teacher for the program, at least one of the women who has taken her class has secured a job from a job fair. More women have been successful in getting jobs on job websites like Indeed, she said. But no matter what, “I do like to get them to job fairs so they can have the experience of networking and asking questions,” Pierson said.