Hollister
– Aiming to slow the revolving doors of California prisons, a
new effort brings one-stop shopping for services such as housing
and job training to parolees in Hollister, Gilroy and Morgan
Hill.
Hollister – Aiming to slow the revolving doors of California prisons, a new effort brings one-stop shopping for services such as housing and job training to parolees in Hollister, Gilroy and Morgan Hill.
“You guys have been in prison. You know it’s crowded there,” said parole agent Anita Coley, addressing roughly two dozen men in the Gilroy Police Department’s community room. “If you want some help getting on the right path and staying there, this is your day.”
It’s called the Parole and Community Team, or PACT. Every month, parolees from Hollister to Morgan Hill file into the GPD, check in with their hometown police, list their needs and, hopefully, meet those needs with the help of the nonprofits gathered to greet them, from faith-based Victory Outreach to job center Work2Future.
Proponents hope the program will cut down recidivism rates among South County convicts, by linking them with the services they need to stay on the straight and narrow. Statewide, roughly 70 percent of parolees are arrested for another felony within three years of being released, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It’s a big issue in South County: Gilroy has the highest concentration of parolees in the county, police reported last year.
“We’re availing these folks who are recently paroled of social service agencies of every stripe, from health to employment to housing – you name it,” said Jeff Fishback, employment services director at St. Joseph’s Family Center. “The bottom line: Get them on the way to a new beginning.”
The program has had success elsewhere in the state, and was only recently introduced to South County: PACT’s first Gilroy meeting was in May. It’s too early to tell if the program has succeeded locally, said Fishback, but already it’s bringing more parolees through his door. After two recent PACT meetings, Fishback met with multiple parolees interested in job training and discounted California IDs available through St. Joseph’s.
“The meetings are so much more effective than giving a referral” to services, said Dina Campeau, chair of the South County Collaborative. “If they get a number, maybe they don’t bother to call. Maybe they call, and they get sent into voicemail hell … This is a new way of the justice system operating, particularly down here.”
Police say the program benefits them too, by giving them face time with new parolees.
“We get to know the parolees even better than we did in the past,” said Gilroy Police Sgt. Jim Gillio. Packets of parole sheets, which list people recently released from prison, and are distributed to patrol officers after each PACT meeting. “It also gives the parolee an opportunity to learn about all the services throughout the city – they realize there’s places they can turn.”
Help can come from unexpected places: Trucking school, for example. Area Truck Driving School, a for-profit entity, has attended Gilroy’s PACT meetings to bring parolees into the well-paid industry.
“Someone from the business community needs to be there, so they know they can get a job in the industry,” said Todd Baum, the school’s admissions representative. “They don’t have to flip burgers for minimum wage.”
Baum cites success stories from parolees such as a 48-year-old man who had ricocheted in and out of prison 22 times, then decided to turn his life around and become a trucker. The school regularly drug-tests its students, and prepares them for jobs that pay $16.50 per hour or more.
“Now he’s making $27 an hour,” said Baum. “That’s more than I’m getting!”
Seth Unger, a department of corrections spokesman, described PACT as part of a statewide push to prepare parolees to re-enter society, bolstered by Assembly Bill 900, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this spring. The bill provides for 16,000 beds in new “secure re-entry facilities,” where soon-to-be parolees would be housed for the last year or two of their sentences, Unger explained.
“Many of the things that are happening at PACT meetings would happen earlier – linking inmates with community service providers and meeting with local law enforcement, for example,” said Unger. “That’s a big shift. We’re looking to provide a continuity of care, from incarceration to re-entry centers to parole, through PACT and other programs.”
