Santa Clara County Re-Entry Resource Center

Santa Clara County Re-entry Resource Center

ADMJ 078

3/17/2016

Prior to visiting the Santa Clara County Re-entry Resource Center (RRC), the idea of having a center designed for former inmates to facilitate re-entry into society seemed foreign to me.  In the U.S., the offenders seemed to be punished more based on the idea of retribution than anything else, so I was pleasantly surprised that a program of this sort could be approved.

According to the presentation given by the RRC Program Manager, Lorena Madrid, when California passed the Public Safety and Realignment Act (AB109) in 2011 as a solution to the state prison crowding, Santa Clara County decided to use the funds from AB109 to “establish a cross-systems Adult Reentry Network which serves all reentering adults” (Madrid, 2016).  So the bottom line seemed to be that because now “non-violent” former state prison inmates (i.e., non-serious felons) are moved to county jails in California, their re-entry back into the community once they are on probation is the responsibility of the local county.  To address this challenge due to AB109, Santa Clara County set up the Re-entry Resource Center.  Its mission is “to reduce recidivism by using evidence-based practices towards implementing a seamless system of services, supports and supervision” (Madrid, 2016).

Upon reflection, it makes sense.  Even if Americans tend to want to punish and incarcerate offenders who violated the social norms, they can also be persuaded to understand that such method ultimately does not reduce the crimes overall (just more crimes behind the wall of the prisons) or the recidivism rate – meaning that the general public safety is not increased by this method.  This must have also come to fore because of the new trend of “evidence-based practices” where the empirical data results drive its practices.  It also appeared that the results are encouraging.  As of December 2014, the AB 109 population residing in Santa Clara had a significantly lower recidivism rate than the state average (34% vs. 61%, Madrid, 2016).

As read above, RRC was set up to serve all reentering adults.  So I was a bit taken back initially that the focus of the program and services was on the AB109 population.  It is financially understandable, as the funding came from AB109.  The purpose of the RRC is to reduce recidivism and re-integrate former inmates into the community.  The population expected to have the most difficulty integrating back to the community, however, must be the group of inmates who have been in the most different environment the longest from the community to which they are to return.  And those must be the AB109 inmates who have committed more serious offenses than the “normal” county jail inmates (who only committed misdemeanors, which have shorter sentences).

Personally, though, I cannot imagine it to be sufficient.  If these inmates spent essentially most of their growing years and young adult lives in a prison, where living conditions, rules, and socialization are vastly different to the “outside,” how well can they adjust in the long run?  To make the matters worse, they come out of the prison or jail without any marketable skills for employment.  Furthermore, it seems still a great stigma once you are labeled a felon; so no large companies would hire former inmates because they are afraid of potential lawsuits, should they commit another crime while they are acting as the company’s agents (i.e., representing the company).  I believe that the correctional facilities must change drastically as well.  Recently, I have read a book titled Unfair (2015) by Adam Benforado, who is a law professor at Drexel University.  He talks about European criminal justice systems being very different from the one in the U.S., and the goal of the correctional facilities is rehabilitation.  They do not get incarcerated for very long, and they gain skills useful in their facilities so that they can get better employment once out in the society.  Because the idea for the correctional facilities is to rehabilitate, perhaps there is also less stigma attached to being an “inmate,” and therefore, people’s perception of these “inmates” once they return to the community is not that extreme.  Benforado proposes other rather radical ideas (e.g., having non-live trials, and all parties being represented by avatars so that any stereotyping or prejudices based on their appearances can be eliminated); however, I have to agree with him on the current correctional systems not working.  Santa Clara County seems to be forefront and doing well in trying to remedy the damage done by the correctional facilities, but wouldn’t it be better if we can minimize the damage to start with so that the re-entry is not that difficult?  I would like to elaborate more on that and his book, but it requires more time than I currently have.  It would be nice to do so someday.