{"id":48318,"date":"2026-05-19T12:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=48318"},"modified":"2026-05-19T12:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:23:09","slug":"inside-san-quentin-a-new-approach-to-rehabilitation-and-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/05\/19\/inside-san-quentin-a-new-approach-to-rehabilitation-and-training\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside San Quentin, a new approach to rehabilitation and training"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Last Mile helps teach residents skills that will get them jobs on the outside. It’s inspiring\u2014but it’s still a prison with too many people behind bars<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Tim Redmond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 15, 2026 (48hills.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been to a fair number of jails in my life, mostly as a reporter, but before today, I\u2019d never been to San Quentin. I knew its reputation: The notorious facility held the state\u2019s death row and execution chamber, and was known for overcrowding and violence (by both residents and guards).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a place that represented everything that was wrong with the criminal justice system: Mass incarceration, particularly of Black men, long sentences with little hope, and an approach that was far more about punishment than the \u201crehabilitation\u201d part of the so-called California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not a place where a group of journalists, men and women, would walk freely among residents, shaking hands, chatting, doing interviews and hearing presentations, accompanied only by an unarmed lieutenant who is the chief public information officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Residents demonstrate tech skills in a new training facility. Photo by Matthew Kadi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s what we did Thursday, and for a prison, it was remarkably chill. Lt. Berry met us as the door, and after going through a couple of old (actually historic) metal gates, we walked out into a sunny open space where people were playing baseball, basketball, and tennis. An inmate band was jamming. The guys smiled and joked with Berry, and she did the same. We were not surrounded by guards; in fact, a group of inmates signed us in to a new education center and offered us water and tangerines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of this may well have been designed and orchestrated for our benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, it\u2019s a very different San Quentin today.<\/strong> CDCR has closed Death Row and moved those inmates to another facility (Gov. Gavin Newsom has paused all executions). The landmark prison has been downgraded from a Level 4 (high security) facility to what the guards called a \u201csoft Level 2,\u201d relatively low security. The guards I talked to couldn\u2019t be happier; coming to work back in the day was scary and unpleasant. Today, they told me, it\u2019s not a bad job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also part of an unusual experiment: With the help of a group called The Last Mile<\/a>, the focus at San Quentin has shifted from punishment to rehabilitation, and dozens of residents are now full-time students, learning job skills and preparing for the time when most of them will re-enter society\u2014with support, counseling, housing assistance, and in some cases, jobs waiting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were there to celebrate the completion of a $239 million complex that has turned old walls into open classrooms, and to meet some of the people who have turned their lives around. Kenyatta Leal<\/a>, who was sitting across the aisle from me during the introductory program, spent 19 years at San Quentin, learned coding through The Last Mile, had a job waiting at RocketSpace even before he won parole, and now runs an apprenticeship program at Slack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We toured the Audio Lab, the Video Lab, the San Quentin News office, and the place where the award-winning the Uncuffed podcast<\/a> is created. The San Quentin News puts out a monthly paper that is circulated nationally and covers a wide range of issues\u2014with no Internet access and no phone access. Those guys are amazing journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Residents put out a monthly newspaper\u2014with no Internet access or phones. Photo by Matthew Kadi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The chairs were not bolted to the floor. Residents could come and go without a jailer with a ring of keys. The students are all issued laptops, which they can take to their cells at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Redlitz and Beverly Parenti started The Last Mile in 2010<\/strong>, with the idea of training inmates for jobs in tech. \u201cAt that point, we were told that by 2020, the US would have a shortage of 1 million coders,\u201d Redlitz said. Teaching inmates that skill would allow them to leave prison and move into good-paying jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the market is different; tech workers need to be familiar with AI\u2014which is hard to learn in a prison where nobody has Internet access. But The Last Mile has come up with workarounds and samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next program will involve solar roofing installations, since skilled trades work will be in heavy demand for at least the next decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the residents at San Quentin are in for long sentences, some for life\u2014but they are all eligible for parole. Berry told me that the vast majority will be released at some point, and will be back in the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many of the people I met on the tour said the same thing: Your life shouldn\u2019t be defined forever by the worst thing you ever did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recidivism rate for TLM graduates is less than five percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is all very inspiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I met Demitrius, a middle-aged man who has trained as a web designer.<\/strong> He\u2019s also trained as an optician; he can make lenses and glasses, and diagnose eye problems. We talked for a while, and I left that conversation with the same feeling I had when I walked out the gates two hours later:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why are all these talented, well-trained, Black men (and a few white and Latino men) still locked behind bars?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is Gov. Newsom, who cut the ribbon on the new facility recently, adding $1 billion more money to the CDCR budget and not moving to close more prisons?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Californians United for a Responsible Budget:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Governor\u2019s own budget numbers make the case for prison closure,\u201d said Amber-Rose Howard, Executive Director of Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB<\/a>), a coalition of more than 100 organizations that asserts at least six more state prisons can close. \u201cCalifornia is wasting more on CDCR while incarcerating fewer people. That is not fiscal discipline. It is a reckless commitment to prioritizing punishment as the answer to public safety. It is a political choice to protect unnecessary prison spending while communities are told there is not enough money for care, housing, food, health, education, and survivor services. This is negligent budgeting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berry told me that the population at San Quentin tends to be older\u2014and all the data shows that the older people get, the less likely they are to reoffend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet: All these Black men are still spending the night locked in a cage, unable to be with their families, unable to access the sorts of things that most of us take for granted, in a system rooted in ancient punitive philosophy that never made any sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I told some of the other reporters in my group that I wasn\u2019t a big fan of prisons in general, that I didn\u2019t get the concept of long, even life sentences for many crimes, and that for all the reforms, what I was seeing at San Quentin wasn\u2019t my idea of justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My colleagues pushed back: These people have committed very bad, violent crimes. They \u201cowe a debt to society.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well: American society has so badly abused, violently oppressed, marginalized, traumatized, and undermined the humanity of Black men for so long that maybe society owes a debt to them, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe ending mass incarceration, and letting the graduates of The Last Mile get their diplomas outside the prison gates, for good, would be a start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit\u00a0here<\/a>. We also invite you to join the conversation on our\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>, and\u00a0Instagram<\/a>.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Last Mile helps teach residents skills that will get them jobs on the outside. It’s inspiring\u2014but it’s still a prison with too many people behind bars By Tim Redmond May 15, 2026 (48hills.org) I\u2019ve been to a fair number of jails in my life, mostly as a reporter, but… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[253],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48319,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48318\/revisions\/48319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}