In the early 2000s, I ran with a tough crowd in South Los Angeles. My friends and I skipped school and many of us used drugs and alcohol. Before long, a number of them were serving long sentences in prison. Others ended up dead.
An angry security guard in my high school once told me I would never amount to anything, that I was destined to also end up either in prison or on the streets. His words were a challenge. “Watch me,” I told him. I enrolled in night school, caught up on my classes, graduated on time and then earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice studies.
I might not have escaped the streets had it not been for that security guard’s unintentional challenge, and throughout my career I’ve felt a moral urgency to help people who fell through the cracks I avoided – who ended up with untreated addictions, mental illness and long prison sentences, and returned from those prison sentences into a community oftentimes reluctant to grant second chances.
More than 10 years ago I got a job with a Los Angeles organization called Shields For Families. Its mission is to work in low-income neighborhoods, often with people returning after doing time. I was a case manager, helping returnees get vital services: helping them get social security cards and birth certificates, connecting them to mental health and substance abuse service providers, and Medi-Cal, enrolling them in vocational training programs, sometimes helping them access housing. If a person didn’t have money for food or for clothing, we helped them out. If they needed financial assistance to take a job-related course, such as training for a commercial drivers’ license, we were there for them.
During the 12 years I’ve been with Shields for Families I’ve ascended to being a program manager. For most of that time the organization has received critical savings achieved by the passage of Proposition 47 in 2014. That proposition marked a pivot in how California doled out criminal justice. By redefining two low-end property and drug crimes as misdemeanors rather than felonies, tens of thousands of people have been diverted away from prison and the resulting cost savings have seeded networks of groups providing vital services to people coming out of prison and those at risk of going in. California has tackled crime smarter, more effectively and more cost-efficiently as a result.
I know all too well why this kind of work is so important and why it’s critical we continue to fund it. Over-relying on incarceration not only undermines public safety, it leaves generational scars on families and entire communities. I grew up separated from my own father who was incarcerated, and have struggled most of my life with the trauma that caused. Now my son, too, is separated from his own father who is incarcerated. It doesn’t have to be this way. What my father and partner both needed was not a prison cell but support overcoming their addictions, which is the root cause of their being locked up.
(Courtesy photo)
It is because of Prop 47 funds that Shields For Families has been on sound enough financial footing that it can go the extra mile for clients. I remember one man whose family gave him an old car after prison; but the car had no tags and no registration, and he knew that if he drove it he risked getting pulled over and being returned to prison on a parole violation. Our organization came up with the cash so that he could get his car registered and drive to work each day.
Our organization’s women’s reentry program called POWR (Providing Opportunities for Women in Reentry) now runs three houses in Los Angeles and Long Beach where women returning from prison can live with their children – thus providing them enough stability to facilitate family reunification.
All told, Shields For Families serves thousands of people in low-income communities dotted around southern California, including hundreds every year who receive re-entry services. Our model is a success story that has positively impacted the lives of thousands of returning prisoners, their families, and the broader communities in which they live.
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However, the dollars we get from Prop 47 are under threat. If, in November, voters pass Proposition 36, which would roll back many of Prop 47’s mandates, more people will be sentenced to prison and less money will be available to fund vital intervention programs.
Shields For Families is well-enough established, and has a diverse enough funding stream, that we would likely survive the rolling back of Proposition 47. Many smaller organizations would not be so fortunate. If Prop 47 dollars disappear, many of those organizations will also disappear.
The result would be evermore clients relying on a handful of larger organizations, such as Shields For Families, which would force us to try to do more with less. The depth and breadth of services we cover would take a hit, and our ability to meaningfully impact lives – and to develop local anti-crime strategies – would be reduced. That, by any measure, is a lose-lose situation for California and for Californians. Proposition 36 must be rejected.
Catherine Lozano is a resident of Los Angeles, and a program manager at Shields for Families in South L.A.