By Bo Tefu, California Black Media
According to a policy brief titled, “California Prison Programs and Reentry Pathways,” African Americans and Native Americans constitute the majority of individuals being released from correctional facilities in California.
The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) report evaluated the outcomes of programs helping to reduce recidivism by addressing the needs of imprisoned people since 2005. Those programs, administered by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), evaluated the education, employment, and rehabilitation of people released between 2015 and 2019. The programs aimed to address a concern raised by The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) in a state audit: most people needing in-person re-entry and rehabilitation programs often do not have access to adequate services and resources.
The state audit focused on three key areas — education, employment, and rehabilitation. According to the report, a total of 185,310 people were released from prison. In 2015, only 46% of released prisoners had participated in at least one program. However, approximately 64% of released prisoners took part in at least one, a steep increase since the previous decade.
The report indicated that California prisons released as many as 40,000 prisoners each year in the last decade. Among these released groups, the average prisoner was a middle-aged male estimated to be around 37 years old. Black and Native American men were the two most represented groups among the inmates released from prisons in California. Although Black people have only made up about 6% of California’s population over the last decade, they represent 25$ of released prisoners.
