Incarceration
For Carmen Garcia, the end of a prison sentence was the beginning of a new set of problems.
“The biggest obstacle for me was continuing to stay in school, because the halfway house wanted me to get a job right away, a full-time job,” she said. “And I remember a case manager said to me, ‘You need to take this job, whatever job they offer you, because now you have a criminal record and you’re not going to be able to get another job. Don’t worry about education, because that’s not going to help you.’”
Sandra Johnson needs a job, desperately. The formerly incarcerated 59-year-old Oakland woman is now a City College of San Francisco student, but needs to find work as well.
In June, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in favor of establishing a new re-entry hiring program that aims to create 1,400 county job opportunities for the formerly incarcerated.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors approved a program to create 1,400 county jobs for formerly incarcerated residents.
Twenty-two-year-old Kamani Holmes has dark skin, stands about six feet tall, and wears a full beard across his face. A Black Power fist adorns the center of his grey hooded sweater with the words “Movement Warriors” across the bottom. His light blue jeans perfectly match the tint of blue in his Jordan sneakers. Then, there’s the bracelet.
In the year after its approval by California voters, Proposition 47 led to the release of over 4,500 inmates from the state’s overcrowded prison system—and some law-enforcement officials are blaming the releases on a statewide increase in crime. But a new report says the data just doesn’t back up that claim.
Stay the course. That was the message given to those sitting in the front row of Oakland’s city council chambers Friday night, when friends and supporters gathered to watch 29 men and women graduate from the BOSS Career Training and Employment Center, in a ceremony that acknowledged the significant hurdles they had overcome to gain employment while under the supervision of the Alameda County Probation Department. BOSS, which stands for Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, is an East Bay non-profit which…
Last Thursday residents gathered to celebrate the Ella Baker Center’s 20th Anniversary, present awards and discuss future plans to continue rebuilding communities of color in Oakland.
A new wave of activists focused on life after prison set a national agenda for reform.
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office has agreed to stop requiring female inmates who are arrested and booked into Alameda County jails to take pregnancy tests. This agreement, reached on October 28, comes as an out-of-court settlement to a lawsuit that was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California.