When a young African-American woman in her 30s was released from a penal institution in San Joaquin County in 2005 she knew she had to hit the ground running to look for employment.
"I knew I wouldn't immediately find a job, but I had to see what was out there," she said. "So I started volunteering with the elderly and disabled."
The former inmate, who did not want her name used, had been convicted of embezzling from her employer, a financial institution, so she knew such a job was no longer open to her.
But she did find a pre-apprenticeship training program in the construction industry. She completed it and now is working in the construction industry in Oakland with great satisfaction.
Unfortunately, many would say she is an exception. An exception to the 3,000 inmates of California's state prisons — not counting federal, county or city institutions — who return to Oakland yearly on parole.
While Oakland's public, private and nonprofit institutions can be lauded for having created many programs to prepare the previously incarcerated to find their footing back in society and the work force, their resources aren't equipped to meet the need, according to many experts in the field.
Most parolees are recidivists; they have been through the justice system more than once and most have been convicted of nonviolent crimes. They are rarely prepared for life outside when they emerge from San Quentin or other local penal
Seventy percent of recidivism comes from parole violations, said Junious Williams, chief executive officer of the Oakland community advocacy group Urban Strategies.
"Either they flunked a urine test or didn't show up for parole, (or had) some sort of technical violation of their parole," Williams said. "They are churning in and out of (San Quentin)."
With the right help, they could be saved from flowing back into San Quentin, he said.
But it's tough to keep people motivated.
Alphonso Baker, released in February at age 43, professed his commitment to changing his life around. He signed up with Peralta College to continue his education. Baker was intent on getting his GED and achieving computer literacy. He was enrolled as a resident of Volunteers of America's program for returning parolees.
"I'm one of the blessed ones. I still have my health. I can change my life," Baker said.
Two months later his parole officer could no longer locate him.
Still, professionals in the field struggle to engender hope for this population's recovery among those who control the purse strings.
Allyson West is the founder of nonprofit California Reentry, based in San Quentin. She supervises volunteers who help inmates prepare for leaving prison.
"We are treating these people as human garbage," she said. "How about turning them into something else that makes sense? And they're all fathers."
In 2004, Oakland voters agreed to tax their property $220 million over a 10-year period to reduce violence. Sixty percent of the funds from Measure Y support the hiring and training of police officers; the balance supports violence prevention programs.
Each fiscal year, the city collects about $20.8 million under Measure Y. Of that, almost $4 million supports the fire services; almost $10 million funds the police department; $6.4 million supports human services; and $703,000 goes to the administration and evaluation of Measure Y.
Meanwhile, $1.8 million goes to four local agencies that support reentering ex-offenders: Volunteers of America, Allen Temple Baptist Church, America Works and Youth Employment Program.
These four organizations represent a fraction of the many providers in Oakland that offer a variety of residential services, job training, anger management skills and domestic violence prevention, advanced education and even job placement for the previously incarcerated.
Still, this is not enough for all the men and women returning every year, experts say.
Mayor Ron Dellums' public safety director, Lenore Anderson, said the city is trying to provide a liaison between sources of crime prevention and intervention on the one hand and the criminal justice system on the other.
"We are trying to improve conditions and chances for people who come out of jail," she said. "Unquestionably there is a link between the recidivism rate in California and the failure for parts of the state to reduce crime and violence."
That is why, sadly, so many of those who come back from prison return soon after.
As part of this effort, Dellums created two new jobs: Anderson's as public safety director, and a reentry employment specialist, Isaac Taggart. (Anderson, however, recently announced that she will leave her position at the end of this month after less than a year on the job.)
Taggart's job is to encourage more employers to hire the previously incarcerated.
Lee Bowes is executive director of America Works, a profit-making organization that finds jobs for those considered unemployable, such as the formerly incarcerated, the disabled, and others. America Works is based in New York and has a chapter in Oakland.
Nationwide, 700,000 prisoners are released every year because of the mass incarcerations of the 1990s, Bowes said.
"We're throwing people in prison for minor offenses and they are serving longer terms," she said. "Eventually we've hit a wall. We can't afford to lock any more up. But we aren't enough educated as a country to see that there are better alternatives. And work is the best alternative. That way they are paying taxes and they are fathers to their children. Without a job, 70 percent return to prison."
Those 700,000 released every year represent a third of the 2.3 million imprisoned nationwide. Nationally, each prisoner costs on average $40,000 a year for upkeep, she said.
"They're going to be coming home anyway, so it's not going to help them to go back," Bowes said. "Put that money into community support."
Williams, of Urban Strategies, agrees.
"We don't have an infrastructure for managing reentering ex-offenders," he said, even accounting for those who are employable.
"There are community-based organizations, county and city agencies or law enforcement all over the place but there's not a common place where we sit down over a plan and look at the numbers, figure out what's working, what's not working," he said.
However, he said there's been a breakthrough since the Alameda County Reentry Network was created in 2007 to study the needs of men and women released from prison.
The network started with a task force to look at the health needs of previously incarcerated people and came up with a set of recommendations to policymakers and the community.
They've mapped out the sources in the East Bay in order to keep track of duplicating services and bring coherence to them.
Next on their task list is sources of employment.
Williams is rueful that "despite the governor's rhetoric on investing in rehabilitation, the money didn't come through in the state budget, and his administration decided to spend all that money instead on (building) prisons." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed spending $8.3 billion for 53,000 new prison beds in California.
But sad to say, even if the rehabilitative services were amply available, many parolees do not want or take the help offered them. Others who are desperate for jobs find that employers are loath to hire them.