In a small ceremony in a prison chapel, 58 inmates at San Quentin State Prison crossed a stage in front of family and fellow prisoners after finishing job training programs or apprenticeships.
Except for the dress code — all the graduates wore blue clothes stamped with prison initials — it was a graduation like any other, with speeches from administrators and current and former graduates, and opportunities for the honorees to pose for photos with the educators and officials conferring the certificates.
The California Prison Industry Authority oversaw the training programs with help from the Last Mile, a San Francisco nonprofit that provides tech training to prisoners and mentorship once they’re released.
“You’ve dedicated yourselves to completing something difficult,” Oak Smith, the prison warden, told the honorees at the event on Wednesday. “You’re on the right path, working in a positive direction, and I know that many of you will be success stories in the future.”
Some graduates were only in their 20s, while others sported gray or white beards. Some were serving just a few years, others faced the possibility of never leaving prison alive.
Ricardo Romero, 45, has spent 21 years in prison. Now he’s a full stack web developer and an audio-visual engineer.
“Prior to coming to prison, I had no employable skills,” Romero said. “My wishes and goals were distorted.”
Romero said he’s hoping to be granted parole next year.
“I was more comfortable at failing than succeeding, because I was great at quitting — I quit on my family, I quit on my community, I quit on myself,” Romero said. “Unfortunately it took me coming to prison to learn my worth and unlock my potential.”
Ben Tobin, 34, is less than a month from release after five years in prison. He just completed a program learning web development fundamentals and earned a college degree in prison.
“The adversity’s there, the learning curve is there, it takes a lot of dedication,” Tobin said of the program.
Nevertheless, he said, “you feel like there’s a community out there that’s invested in your future.”
Ammen Shinti, 68, is seeking a commutation on a life sentence. In the meantime he has learned audio and video production.
“It gives us lifelong skills,” he said of the job training.
Shinti said he hopes not only to use the skills he’d learned but eventually to teach them to others. He said his late grandmother had “got her Microsoft accreditation at 104, she was always pushing for education,” and he intended to carry on the tradition.
Bill Davidson, general manager of the California Prison Industry Authority, said all of its funding comes from work its graduates do, such as cleaning health care centers or building furniture.
Participants in the training programs have a reincarceration rate of approximately 15% three years after release, Davidson said. By comparison, a statewide average of 44.6% was reported by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2016, the most recent year that data were available.
“It’s really those 85% that don’t come back is the number I like to focus on,” Davidson said.
