Prison Break: Realignment Inmates Enter Rehabilitation in S.F.

While Bracy was surfing coaches in the final days of 2011, California met its first realignment benchmark, cutting the prison population down by 11,000 inmates since the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Just 23,000 more inmates to go.

Jamie Soja

Henzi reviews the Tenderloin hotel room of Kheali Maua, a 27-year-old recently released inmate.

Jamie Soja

Henzi and probation supervisor Gabe Calvillo say that finding a crack pipe likely will not make them send someone to county jail.

Related Content

• Sanctuary Sellout
  November 18, 2009

More About

• Nate Bracy
• Wendy Still
• Sarah Wanser
• Prisons
• Criminal Sentencing and Punishment

Some jurisdictions are already groaning with the burden: Los Angeles County officials are struggling to meet the mental health demands of released prisoners, and Riverside County released 57 inmates early after maxing out its jails' capacity with realignment inmates. In comparison, just 38 inmates have been sentenced to the San Francisco Sheriff's Department custody from state court so far, 20 of whom have since been released to community supervision. "We have bed space," says Undersheriff Jan Dempsey. City health officials say they are meeting the released inmates' need for medical, mental, and substance abuse programs.

San Francisco's probation department is expanding with the caseload. With the state realignment money, Chief Still will be hiring more than a dozen new officers in the next month, in order to staff a 17-person realignment team. Both Still and city health officials will look to increase the available housing they have to offer clients. (So far, about six released prisoners with no homes have turned down probation for housing, preferring to live homeless. The rest are staying in city-provided housing, with family, in residential hotels, or crashing with whoever will have them.)

Calvillo says it's still too early to say whether the department's new techniques are paying off. The city controller will collect data this year on the effects of realignment on the city, including how many clients have re-offended. That's the only agency that will be checking up. The state realignment law — crafted by law enforcement community and the Brown administration — has no mandate to measure the various counties' outcomes. "The stunning lack of accountability in realignment is a problem," says U.C. Berkeley's Krisberg. "There's no one in charge of monitoring what results we're getting."

For now, the early results are mostly anecdotal. As of press time, Maua was still in her hotel room and hooked up with a bevy of city services to help her out. Bracy's regular probation officer, Adela Martinez, was encouraging him to go to a residential Walden House program for rehab.

Bracy says he's been in five residential programs — four of which he ran away from after being mandated to go by a parole officer. He compares them to being locked up in jail. He checked into Walden House in Hayes Valley earlier this month, and lasted a week before clashing with another client and fleeing.

His probation officer sent him back to the DPH's rehab referral service, which mandated that he attend a group treatment session three times a week for an hour. He was back to sleeping on a friend's couch — but seemed in good spirits. He said he'd been sober for eight days.

Probation may have made him get serious about staying clean, but he knows, to really change, it's on him. "I've been through so many programs, I already know the steps of what I need to do. I just need to apply them."