Restorative Justice — Envisioning a Society that Invests in People over Punishment
“I wake up every day knowing I am free. That is an incredible blessing, and you may ask yourself how can it get any better? The answer to that is participating in the CROP Organization’s Ready4Life program. Now I wake up free and excited that I am moving forward into a career path that will sustain me and provide me with dignity and purpose. I can see another path than the minimum wage hamster wheel that awaits so many of us returning citizens. I served 30 years on a sentence of two consecutive life without the possibility of parole. I spent those decades in the world’s largest women’s prison in California until granted a rare Governor’s commutation. I understand the importance of my second chance and the value of each step I take in my freedom journey. I know what it takes to survive and thrive in an environment built to tear you down and what I am experiencing here is in stark contrast to those years inside. Today I am surrounded by coaches and instructors who understand exactly what I need because they have lived those same experiences. From the exceptional crafting of the curriculum to accessing an incredible wealth of support from the CROP organization team members, I wake up every day knowing that I will succeed. I am so grateful. Thank you” Michelle Scott, CROP Fellow
Over the last three years I have been deeply engaged with CROP — Creating Restorative Opportunities & Programs (croporganization.org) — whose purpose is to work with formerly incarcerated individuals and transform their lives and heal communities by creating pathways to economic mobility, personal leadership and civic engagement. I was first introduced to CROP by its founders Ted Gray, Ken Oliver, Jason Bryant, Richard Mireles, and Matt Braden, all previously incarcerated and dedicated to its core mission. In 2021, the incoming Executive Director, Terah Lawyer invited me to join their Board serving as the Chair.
I had the opportunity to visit San Quentin prison as part of our Board retreat where our founders wanted the Board to experience what life is like behind bars and the understand that people like Michelle exist that are getting released and are struggling to make it out in the real world.
600,000+ individuals are released from prison in the US every year. 68% are rearrested within 3 years of being released; and the median income of individuals released from prison in their first year is $10,090. CROP is trying to change that with support from the California Workforce Development Board, Crankstart Foundation, Irvine Foundation, Shusterman Foundation, and ReWork the Bay and led by proximate leaders with over 110 years of experience with the criminal justice system. CROP offers a comprehensive approach to training formerly incarcerated individuals in a state-of-the-art residential facility in West Oakland where CROP fellows are offered accommodation and a yearlong training program focused on personal leadership, coaching and professional workplace development support, as well as training on IT skills including coding and AI, financial wellness and robust workforce training to prepare participants for careers in the tech industry.
On Aug 1st as part of the CROP Board retreat, we visited San Quentin prison in the Bay Area — the oldest and most notorious. The visit was organized so we could get a sense of what life is like behind bars and but more importantly understand that as a society we have invested more in punishment and not enough in rehabilitation.
San Quentin houses level two and three offenders and provides them rehabilitative opportunities but it also houses the notorious ‘death row’ for condemned prisoners. Governor Newsom has prioritized San Quentin to become a center for rehabilitation and restorative justice modelled on the prisons in Norway (California leaders learn from Norwegian prison system) with the goal to offer job training and support programs inside prisons to disrupt the cycle of recidivism. CROP is an integral part of this reform experiment.
The San Quentin program includes several traditional skilling programs but also other efforts that embrace media, video and film (The Auteurs of San Quentin), digital technology, as well as entrepreneurship training.
I have visited prisons before as part of the digital training program that Microsoft was offering but these were mostly to their training centers and some brief interactions with the prisoners that were part of these training programs. My anecdotal visits as a tourist to Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, and Nazi concentration camps were early eye openers to comprehending the conditions that incarcerated people are forced to live in.
This visit was unlike anything prior. It was an immersive and intense experience; although I was told, this would not be as intense compared to any other prison in California state.
San Quentin sits on an idyllic location on the water and close to the exclusive communities of Tiburon and Sausalito. The entry, like any controlled environment is through a series of heavy metal doors and San Quentin was no different, walking in through the main gates across a vast expense of parking and exterior facilities to the main fortified entrance you get to see the view of the Bay and East Bay communities. A small check point funnels everyone through where your identifications are checked and recorded, and your right wrist gets stamped. You then go through another set of doors that open with a loud clang and you walk into a small vestibule and the door shuts behind you, are identification is checked again and the next set of doors open into the courtyard which is surrounding by administrative buildings which also houses several chapels.
In the main chapel we meet two prisoners who are our hosts Vincent and Oscar. We sat with them in a circle to listen to their story of how they ended up in prison because of murder. Being guides to visitors is part of their job and counts towards their rehabilitation and looked upon positively during their parole hearing. It is surreal to sit with folks who have murdered someone while they were young and have a casual conversation with them. Both were dressed in prison issued blue and told us their journey and why they wanted to be moved to San Quentin so they could eventually be released. Vincent, our young host had already been in the system for over 15 years and was very confident that he would be out in a year. This is a hopeful part of our visit. Several of the other prisoners who were also chatting with other some of our CROP founders who they knew from served time together.
After an extended conversation with our hosts, we were then led to the yard where prisoners exercise, recreate and hang out. We passed what is the ‘dungeon’ which we would visit last. Prison is a highly segregated place — even in the yard there are specific areas for whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asian and indigenous folks. This is perfectly normal and there was no socializing among the different groups. Ted Gray, one of the co-founders of CROP was one of the only ones that managed to create a mixed baseball team in Soledad where he was serving. While the yard was surrounded by barbed wire, class and armed guards, several of the prisoners approached us and spoke to us. Some of us were wearing our CROP t- shirts and came over to thank us for the program and they were hoping to get into the program upon their release. One of them came running after us and excitedly told us he had seen the flyer and had applied and wanted to make sure he got it. They were hugs and pleasantries exchange all around.
Next, we visited the Media Center mentioned. Here prisoners publish the San Quentin News on monthly basis and the paper is distributed across the state to all its prisons. (See image). The participants undertake all tasks in its production including writing, editing and publishing. Fellow inmate volunteers help them, and a nonprofit has been formed to help them raise funds for the newspaper. Next door is the film and video editing where prisoners learn to make films and edit videos. As much as the yard is segregated, here you had inmates of all races, Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and Asian working together. It was a remarkable window of normalcy, comradery and hope.
We were then led to the part of the prison where inmates are housed and there the experience changes completely. We once again entered through a secure door in the wing that houses the general population with the purpose of getting a sense of what cells look like. They are tight narrow rooms with a bunk bed that house two inmates with a sink and toilet behind. Very confined, dimly lit, and poorly ventilated. Here too we got to interact with some of the inmates that were in their cells. One of our CROP founders chatted up a fellow inmate who was with him in Soledad Prison for 10 years, fist bums and pleasantries.
Visiting death row inmates was our next stop starting with their exercise yard. The exercise space was a large semi covered area with about 16–20 cages. Each cage was about 10x10 x10 feet where prisoners were allowed to spend an hour every day. They could walk around or do some exercises but nothing else. The place was empty during our visit but when there are inmates there, we were told it can be noisy. We next entered the facility where they are housed — there about 500 people on death row in California and about 400 are housed here. San Quentin is the only California Prison that houses death row inmates. The size of the prison population in this category is large since there have been no executions since early two thousand in CA state. This means as lifers all these prisoners will die a natural death here.
The cell layout is similar — narrow rooms, with the difference being each prisoner is housed individually. As we passed by their cells most were lying in bed watching TV, some were up working at the desk or reading. Every cell had been individualized by the occupants, several of them said hello to us and some stood up to chat with us. I could not help but notice the signs on each door with instructions on how to handle the inmates — two signs stuck with me: one of them said, “hearing impaired”, and other “extra-large handcuffs and chains”.
As we exited the row of cells, we were shocked to see on the opposite walls men in small cages sitting there chained. These cages in which you could only sit, there was no room to stand or move. These men were waiting to be escorted out to another part of the prison. Each prisoner had to be escorted handcuffed by a guard. On our way out we passed several of these prisoners who were either being led back in or out.
Our final stop was the dungeon, this very dark set of rooms behind a large door where prisoners were thrown in for days or months at a time for infractions, were beaten there and left to stay on this gravel floor in pitch darkness. There were several small rooms there. Although the dungeon was closed in 1940 the horror of the place remained.
As I walked out into the fresh air again, I couldn’t help but think San Quentin is a place full of hope, fraternity, despair, dread, sadness and horror.
It became abundantly clear to me these folks are untrusted, disapproved of, and unseen by all of us. And those that serve their time and are released back into society do so with minimal support. No surprise then so many of them return to prison. For many who have served 15, 20, 30 years this is home, this is all they know. The outside world is now just as alien to them as prison was when they first entered. Surely it is in our collective interest to help them reintegrate back into the society they long left behind.
CROP is doing that by providing a comprehensive program that includes housing, financial support, ready for life and technology skilling so people like Michelle Scott has a chance to redeem herself, pull her life together and become a contributing member of society.
The program which launched in April is training 12 people at the Oakland residential facility and 22 in Los Angeles who are receiving training on-line. Our staff is justice impacted and they too need support and capacity to manage and grow what is a start-up hoping to create sustained lifestyle change. Learn more about our work here: CROP — Creating Restorative Opportunities & Programs (croporganization.org) and support us — give your time, mentor a CROP fellow, hire a fellow and learn more about our work and join us. The CROP founders found purpose in prison and changed their lives around. They are fighting to stay out with us, be seen, trusted and approved. These individuals are my friends, make them yours too — break bread with them, listen to them and support them. Let’s envision a society that invests in people over punishment.
