Young inmates learn to code
SAN QUENTIN, CALIF. – Inside an aging brick facility ringed by a chain-link fence and agricultural fields, 14 young people convicted of violent crimes try to program a better future for themselves.
For the past two months, they’ve been learning to write code through a first-of-its-kind pilot program at the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility in Camarillo, California, about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
While other young people their age churn code in dorm rooms, these mostly black and Hispanic men and women, serving sentences for crimes such as armed robbery and manslaughter, frequently come from neighborhoods where people go to prison more often than they go to college.
They’re trying to break that streetsto-prison cycle by picking up new skills – JavaScript, HTML, CSS – that could lead to high-paying jobs after they’re released. In this classroom lined with desktop computers, they get help from an unlikely crew.
About 400 miles to the north – a 30minute drive from San Francisco – three men in prison blues sit shoulder-toshoulder inside the razor-wire-topped concrete and steel walls of California’s oldest penitentiary. These inmates at San Quentin State Prison righted their own lives by learning to code. Once or twice a month, they coach these young people to do the same over Skype.
One young woman hugs her arms protectively across her chest and talks about landing in the same youth correctional facility where her mother spent years. She says she loves her mother but doesn’t want to end up like her.
Jason Jones, 34, who’s serving a sentence for assault with a deadly weapon and has been locked up since he was 21, fights back tears.
“My mom was incarcerated, too,” he tells her from San Quentin. “It hurts when you have to step away from the people you care about just to make things right. But I guarantee you that a small sacrifice is going to give you a big return.”
The Last Mile coding program trains inmates in skills that are in high demand all over the country. Then a joint venture puts some of them – currently eight men in San Quentin – to work inside the prison, making $16.49 an hour in California, part of which goes to pay restitution.
The program started by technology industry veterans Chris Redlitz and Beverly Parenti is expanding to other prison populations and across state lines: 144 prisoners are enrolled in six facilities in California and one in Indiana, and two more prisons in California will come online by year’s end. There are plans for prisons in Oklahoma and Kansas and other states.
Jobs on the inside lead to jobs on the outside. California inmates find work with tech start-ups in nearby San Francisco and Silicon Valley and in Southern California. The coding program has graduated 393 students and boasts a zero recidivism rate. One graduate works for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan’s philanthropic venture.
This is the first time young people ages 17 to 23 are being taught to code in a California correctional facility. Written in colorful chalk on one wall are two words: “Code Busters.”
One code buster is Thalia Ruiz, 20, from San Jose, who says she abused drugs and alcohol while “gangbanging.” Ruiz says the Last Mile set her on a new path.
“I just felt like I had to show them I can get out, I can rehabilitate and be a better person,” she says. “I’m not gonna get out and keep doing what I was doing ’cause I’m just gonna end up in the same place that I started, and that’s not where I want to be.”
What may keep these young people from returning to prison: having men- tors whose life experiences are so similar to their own.
Slowly, the three San Quentin inmates, who have collectively served more than a half-century in prison, draw out the youths at the Camarillo facility by sharing the fears and doubts they had to overcome to learn to code inside prison and the hope for the future it gave them. The students lean forward, some jotting notes on yellow and pink pads of paper, others moving monitors out of the way to focus more intently.
Zach Moore, 37, has been incarcerated since he was 15 and in the adult prison system since he was 17 for murder. He fought to get into the Last Mile. He is scheduled to be released in November after 13 years of incarceration and marvels that he’s going to work for a Silicon Valley company. “I didn’t think I’d ever get out of prison,” he says from San Quentin.
At any given time, more than 600 young offenders are incarcerated in one of three California facilities operated by the Division of Juvenile Justice. A disproportionate number are Latino (nearly 50 percent) and black (36 percent).
Few have the training or skills to survive without returning to crime. Nearly three-quarters of those released are arrested again within three years. The number of black youths who are repeat offenders is even higher – 84 percent. That has put pressure on state officials to better prepare young offenders for life on the outside.
The Last Mile’s track record caught the attention of Chuck Supple, director of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Division of Juvenile Justice, who worked to bring the program to the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility.
The Last Mile looks to expand to other youth facilities. In Camarillo, it could grow to accommodate as many as 48 students in two six-month tracks. Graduates from the program will get help finding internships. The Last Mile works on scholarships for coding boot camps, too.
That could be a game changer for Joseph Varela, 20, from Santa Rosa, serving time for manslaughter. His three younger brothers look up to him as a father figure, and he knows he has to do better. “I have to change because, if I don’t change, this is the only thing they’re gonna know,” he said.
Job training has significantly reduced the number of repeat offenders. In California, inmates who work in joint venture programs have a recidivism rate of 9 percent, compared with 46 percent for those who don’t, according to Chuck Pattillo, general manager of the California Prison Industry Authority, which works with the Last Mile on the coding program.
To qualify for the program, young men and woman at the Ventura facility took a written test and a logic test and sat down for a one-on-one interview. They see the program as a ticket to realizing their dreams of becoming social workers, firefighters, attorneys – or programmers.
Racking up coding cred puts Daniel Martin – an 18-year-old gamer who enjoyed playing “Destiny,” “Halo” and “Call of Duty” before his conviction for robbing a 7-Eleven – closer to his goal of working on video games.
“If anybody else ever gets locked up somehow and has the chance to do this program, I recommend do it,” Martin says. “It’s actually really fun and useful.”
To qualify for the program, young men and women at the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility took a written test and a logic test and sat down for a one-on-one interview. They see the program as a ticket to realizing their dreams of becoming social workers, firefighters, attorneys — or programmers.