Program for former prison inmates ‘bursting at the seams’

By Patrick Makiri
The Guardsman

Despite budget cuts, City College’s Second Chance Program, assisting former California prison inmates with higher education, is set to expand.

The program’s counselor Raymond Fong said that with 120 students, they were “bursting at the seams.”

“Twenty-five students have walked through the door since the beginning of the semester looking to enroll,” he said.

With over 168,000 inmates recorded in California in 2009, each of whom costs the state on average $47,000, state representatives are recognizing the need for reform.

Approximately 70 percent of California inmates return to prison for a second stint, which is the nation’s highest rate, according to a statement from the Office of the Governor.

“The Governor knows that we cannot fix our prisons without reducing recidivism, and we cannot reduce recidivism without creating more space and programs for prisoners,” according to the statement.

Second Chance lost counselors after its parent organization, Educational Outreach Programs & Services, received a 40 percent budget cut. To make due, Fong employs a team of Second Chance students who treat their turbulent past as an asset for mentoring former inmates, some of whom are rival gang members.

“We all are the same when it comes to the problems we can’t deal with,” said peer counselor Eli Crawford, who served more than 40 years behind bars.

“Young people constantly keep me motivated,” Crawford said. He goes off campus to San Francisco’s most dangerous street corners to meet with youth.
“A convict is the neediest [expletive] in the world,” he said. “When they show they have respect for me, that’s when I know they still have some respect for themselves. Their faces light up when I tell them they’re doing good.“

A real alternative

Second Chance’s outreach coordinator Charles Moore enrolled at City College in 1976 after being paroled. He remembers the Sheriff’s Department transporting inmates to the Ocean campus to restart school after incarceration.

“It’s not empty promises,” Moore adds. The people going through this program go on to be those that make the program survive.”

One of those students is Jesse Jackson, who served 23 years behind bars before enrolling.

“I got out of prison Aug. 6, and by Aug. 7, I was enrolled in 17 units,” Jackson said. “A few months ago, I didn’t even know what a unit was. Now I wake up everyday and get to school four hours before my first class.”

Next steps

Fong and some other administrators met a couple weeks ago with the support of board of trustees member Steven Ngo to discuss strategies for expanding the program.

Ngo claims that for every $1 spent on the successful rehabilitation of a former offender $2–$3 is saved in taxpayer money.

“If we had lobbyists in Sacramento we wouldn’t be here at this meeting,” Ngo said. “Whoever has interests in building a prison are out there in Sacramento saying.”

At the same meeting, Fong expressed his pride in the current group of students.

“None of the students in this room have less than a 3.0 GPA,” he said. “So no one here is on probation,” he paused and rethought his previous statement, “Well, everyone here is on that probation.”