The version of Orange County that greeted Hector Cervantes when he got out of prison in 2012 was less forgiving than it is today, at least when it comes to the treatment of people who were, and are, formerly incarcerated.
These days, the county’s biggest universities offer programs to help people make the transition from prisoner to student. And local nonprofits train the formerly incarcerated in job skills and, when they can, they help them find work. And sometime in late 2027 or early 2028, Orange County – once a county where the local jail released inmates in the dead of night, often without a ride – will open Common Good, a publicly funded center that will offer everything from temporary housing to jobs.
But all that is what’s on tap today, or tomorrow. In 2012, life for former inmates was tougher.
For example, jobs and job training for Cervantes and the 35,789 other men and women who got out of prisons or jails in California that year were available but limited. Los Angeles County had (and has) Homeboy Industries, which offered jobs and training to former gang members and former prison inmates, but there was nothing similar in Orange County.
Housing, too, was tricky, in part because landlords still could legally screen out people who had been incarcerated. Cervantes rented a room from his sister when he got out, but he would have had to scramble if he had to find a different place.
And school …
“Wasn’t easy,” said Cervantes, who is co-founder and director of UC Irvine’s Underground Scholars program, an 8-year-old effort that offers guidance and support to about 100 formerly incarcerated people who attend the university.
“Anything could have derailed me.”
Yet nothing did.
Cervantes, who turned 23 in 2012, initially earned an associate’s degree from Santa Ana College, working all the while. Then, after missing a deadline to apply to Cal State Fullerton, he wound up at UCI, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in public planning. These days, even though his job is at UCI, he’s studying for his doctorate in education at UCLA.
“I love school,” he said.
Vibe shift
Cervantes had help.
A former girlfriend inspired him to get back into school. A mentor he met in community college nudged him to stick with it.
But in 2012, and for some years after, the Santa Ana native – who said he spent most of his life between ages 13 and 23 either incarcerated or on probation – didn’t have access to the kind of support that he could find, from organizations and from the law, if he got out of prison today.
State and federal efforts aimed at helping the formerly incarcerated get jobs (such as the Reentry Employment Opportunities program), or housing (HOME American Rescue Plan), weren’t yet in effect.
Also, in 2012, “ban the box” laws had yet to be widely implemented, meaning it was still legal for employers to disqualify a prospective employee simply because they’d disclosed a criminal record on a job application form. Today, so-called “business necessity” rules often apply, meaning applicants for most private and public-sector jobs are legally required to be given a chance to explain the circumstances of why they wound up behind bars, and how they have or haven’t changed.
And, critically, the public mood, at least locally, seemed to be darker when it came to recently incarcerated people.
National polling conducted in 2012 by Pew Research, among others, found that a bipartisan majority of Americans believed government was spending too much money on prisons and putting too many people behind bars.
But strong anecdotal evidence from that period suggests Orange County wasn’t yet part of the trend.
The local district attorney of that era, Tony Rackauckas, routinely won re-election by telling voters how tough he was on criminals. Local defense attorneys pushed, whenever possible, for cases to be tried in front of Los Angeles-area juries, while prosecutors angled for cases to be tried in Orange County, where juries were viewed as more inclined to convict.
Though the country was just beginning to downshift from peak incarceration – in 2008, roughly 1 in 100 American adults was in prison or jail – Cervantes said that when he first got out of prison, even talking about a criminal background was tough.
“You just learned not to bring it up, or to let it be brought up.”
What many people perhaps didn’t realize at the time is that a flood of formerly incarcerated men and women were about to get out of prison.
So-called “realignment” laws, including AB 109, which passed in 2012 and was aimed at reducing overcrowding in California prisons, were leading to changes within the prison and jail systems. Those changes also meant reduced sentences, including early exits, for a growing number of non-violent offenders. Lately, the state’s prison and jail population has shrunk slightly, yet about 37,000 people a year – more than were exiting from a bigger pool of prisoners a decade ago – have been getting out of prisons and jails in California.
That’s helped to fuel the state’s housing crisis. It’s also boosted the ranks of people needing jobs and housing and school.
But it’s also meant fewer people in custody, more parents raising their children and more potential in the form of business start-ups, scholarship and art, among other things.
This ongoing march of people exiting prison has come at a time when many Americans with no criminal history have begun to question the legitimacy of some convictions. It’s also come when at least some argue that the national push against drug use and abuse – the so-called War on Drugs of the 1980s and ’90s – put people into prison for crimes that many others committed, with impunity, in their living rooms.
The upshot has been, if nothing else, a change in branding for the formerly incarcerated. Throw away the key? The public is more inclined to view training and other forms of assistance, not life-long punishment, as a more practical path for people who used to be inmates.
The data on whether or not this attitude has paid off is still ugly, but it’s improving. Today, about 30% of people who get out of prison wind up behind bars within three years. In 2012, it was closer to 50%.
The path for former inmates “is different now,” Cervantes said. “Not great, but not what it was.”
More than money?
“Our goal, essentially, is this: To get people coming out of incarceration back on their feet and on an equal playing field,” said Meghan Medlin, founder and chief executive of Hub for Integration Reentry & Employment (HIRE), a nonprofit aimed at helping formerly incarcerated people that operates in a warren of clean, organized offices near Theo Lacy Jail in Orange.
“One part of our goal, a big part, is to get them into what we consider to be quality employment,” Medlin added. “That means a living wage with a pathway for improvement and benefits. And it means everything that goes along with that. … Sobriety, housing, training. All of it.”
Medlin said she isn’t, or at least didn’t start out to be, a do-gooder. She worked for many years as an employment recruiter, making a living by connecting employees to employers.
But, early on, she said, she found a niche in helping people “with backgrounds,” which described job seekers who’d formerly been incarcerated or were otherwise involved in the criminal justice system. Those people often wanted more than work, she said; they wanted to change their lives. Getting a job for those people, she said, is pretty fulfilling.
She started HIRE during the first year of the pandemic, after she’d worked outside of the industry for a stint. Since its launch date, Aug. 3, 2020, her organization has helped 4,451 people through a variety of services, including mentorships and skills workshops.
Last year, HIRE’s “Jobs Not Jails” program connected 175 formerly incarcerated people with gainful employment. About three-quarters of those clients had an annual starting wage of $20.88 an hour. It’s not wealth, but it’s also not public assistance.
Construction and restaurants are big employers, but Medlin said HIRE has helped formerly incarcerated people get jobs at banks and insurance companies and other white-collar venues.
Medlin said flatly that HIRE will help any person, of any age, convicted of any crime.
The only must-have, she added, is effort.
“We’re an open-entry, opt-in program, so people have to choose to participate in our services. … Our focus is on whether someone is ready and willing to work, and what barriers we can help them address.
“Not everybody who comes to HIRE is necessarily looking for a job, or is ready for a job at that particular moment.
“Sometimes their first step is getting stable enough to be ready.”
Medlin couldn’t say why the public has changed its views on helping former prisoners, but cost clearly is part of it. Last year, the state estimated the cost of keeping a person incarcerated in California ranged from $127,800 to $132,860 a year. And some economists have noted that the nation loses about $75 billion annually in productivity because of the high unemployment rate (roughly five times the national average) for former inmates.
Still, Medlin suggested that if more people are keen to help former inmates, the shift isn’t all about money.
“When I started in this, people were, like, ‘Why do you do that? Aren’t you scared?’ But I’ve also always had people come up to me, on the side, and say, ‘Oh, I wish this had been here’ for their brother, or their dad or, you know, whoever,” Medlin said.
“I just think it’s become less taboo as more people have used their voice, and as more people have been connected to the (criminal justice) system.
“It’s not always about somebody else.”
‘They need purpose’
Medlin’s office is within walking distance of a 4.6-acre construction project, on land that once held the Orange County Animal Shelter.
That’s where builders are putting up a cluster of stores, a cafe, a commercial kitchen, temporary housing and training facilities – even a gym – all of which is expected to be open by the spring of 2028. The project is the county’s first publicly financed effort to help the thousands of people who get out of prison or jail in Orange County each year, but who don’t yet have new lives.
Not everything about the project – which the county is calling Common Good – is set in stone.
For example, the county has set aside about $117 million for construction and early operation. And officials say they could launch the project with what they will get for that money. But the county also is seeking grants and gifts to boost what it hopes will be a long-running effort, suggesting the final price tag isn’t known.
It’s also not clear if people with all types of criminal backgrounds will be welcome. While HIRE works with anybody, county officials suggested there would be some vetting for those being helped via the Common Good system.
What is clear, for now, is that Medlin’s organization, HIRE, will be the county’s operating partner, training workers who’ll sell everything from pet supplies to lattes, and overseeing short-term housing for up to 52 people.
It’s also clear that the county is hoping the project will be a key part of its broader effort to streamline and improve public services.
“Basically, it’s better to not return to jail,” said Liz Guillen-Merchant, the county’s assistant deputy chief operating officer.
“But, often, when people are trying to re-enter society after being in jail or prison, they don’t have the resources they need. They don’t have a bed to sleep in at night. And we’re all losing because of that, right? It’s more costly when people are getting rearrested within three days.
“So we’ve heard from the population that will be helped by this, we’ve asked them. And they told us they need purpose. And that’s where we kind of came up with the idea for this crown jewel, the Homeboy Industries of Orange County. Except, where that is a private nonprofit, this is ours, the county’s. We own it.
“This is the right thing to do.”