US prison inmates returning to society: How will they be received?

After 25 years of working in prison systems in Arizona and California, Faucette combines a policy wonk's understanding of criminal justice issues with prison-yard savvy. He's as comfortable in front of a microphone as he is around people with serious rap sheets.

On this day, he walks over on his lunch hour to Amity's 150-bed residential facility to check on new arrivals. He stops Alfred Medina Jr., whose face is covered in a pastiche of tattoos, on his way into the building. The two sit down in a living room with a large fish tank, where they talk about Mr. Medina's experience at Amity.

Medina recalls the day in late November when L.A. sheriff's deputies dropped him off in chains, after he had been picked up for not reporting in with his parole officer. They gave him the option of doing a stint at Amity instead of going back to prison. Before Oct. 1, 2011, when realignment went into effect, he would not have had a choice. "I want to stay out," he says. "I feel comfortable here."

Medina was an active member of the East Side Stoners gang, dealing drugs out of a house in East Los Angeles he shared with his father, who was also a dealer.

Intergenerational gang membership, drug addiction, and violence are all he has known most of his life. One of the tattoos on his face, a constellation of six stars, originally stood for the six rival gang members he says he stabbed in prison. Medina admits that after he was released last time, he went back to taking heroin and speed, this time in the bathroom of a halfway house.

But he's sought to make changes. He has volunteered with a scared-straight program, delivering lectures to teens caught shoplifting. Now, he says, the stars on his face represent his six children. "My heart is softening up; it's not as hard as it used to be," he says.

Faucette and Medina shake hands as they part. "When we opened this place originally, they wouldn't take these guys," says Faucette. The worst of the worst were thought to be beyond help. Residential programs like Amity's try to bring stability to the chaotic lives of these former prisoners. No one here, though, least of all Faucette, dismisses the magnitude of the challenge.

"It's not about just getting somebody back in the job force. They've never had a job before ... it's not about giving them three hots and a cot. It's about how can they live in a place like this," he says, referring to the group home and the community.

Still, Faucette believes the realignment represents a chance for a new approach after decades of lock-'em-up policies. "We already know the formula that keeps people out of jail," he says, citing drug treatment, counseling, and skills training. "This is an opportunity for us to do some things right."

But he is also aware of the number of inmates who are going to have to be dealt with – and what might happen if a lack of funding or failure for some other reason results. "If this doesn't get done right in L.A., it's going to bring down the whole state," he says.

* * *

Allen Thorne represents another dimension of Cali­for­nia's prison experiment and will help determine whether it will work. He is a former inner-city gang member who killed a rival gang member with a shotgun when he was a teenager. A judge sentenced him to 15 years to life, a term he started serving when he turned 20.

While Mr. Thorne isn't the type of "nonserious" offender who would be locked up in a county jail under realignment, he is someone more likely to win eventual freedom in the new climate in California. Already, since Brown became governor, parole boards have become more flexible: The number of lifers granted parole rose from 119 in 2007 to 463 last year, CDCR statistics show.

For Thorne, the time he spent in prison may have been more violent than his time on the streets. Once incarcerated, he says, he quickly became an enforcer for a Mexican gang. "They said at the time I was one of the best for assaults – staff, inmate, it didn't matter," he says.

Previous

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Next