The Last Mile has figured out how to break the cycle of incarceration

Correctional facilities struggle to be places where individuals can reinvent or rehabilitate themselves. Prisons have been called “hate factories” — places that churn out returning tenants, where gangs clash in the yard and where prison jobs pay a degrading wage of a couple dozen cents per hour. People are more often than not embroiled in a brutal world of festering resentment.

And taxpayers unawarely support this system.

The cost to incarcerate one inmate in California is $60,000 per year (there are 33 prisons in the state of California). With 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States, the annual cost is jaw-dropping. Over $81 billion a year.

Yet, most people go back to prison after they’re released. Two out of three people released from the prison system recidivate within three years, according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics. That number goes up within five years.

Instead of transformation in prison, hurtful behaviors and beliefs are all to often cemented even deeper.

This makes the current incarceration system across the U.S. an expensive, demoralizing, and ineffective loop for millions of Americans.

Stand Together, a social change organization committed to upending this cycle of incarceration, invests in and empowers the most effective reentry and in-prison programs in the country. While on this mission, Stand Together discovered a movement inside the walls of one US prison.

In San Quentin State Prison in California, The Last Mile (TLM) program is hard at work creating a much needed pipeline for high-skilled labor, which saves taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, breaks generational cycles of incarceration, and improves the safety of whole communities by reducing recidivism. In other words, TLM breaks down stereotypes and challenges the paradigms that keep some of this country’s greatest potential locked up.

An in-prison coding program where graduates can earn annual salaries from $70,000-$185,000

In 2010, two San Francisco serial entrepreneurs and venture capitalists Beverly Parenti and Chris Redlitz, also wife and husband, visited San Quentin and were surprised at what they saw.

“When I went inside San Quentin with Chris,” Beverly remembered, “I saw intelligent, driven, evolved men who have been doing so much work on themselves, and studying and earning degrees, it was the antithesis of what one expected to see inside a correctional facility.”

“These are some of the most loyal, motivated, humble and hard-working men I’ve ever met,” said Redlitz.

For years, Beverly and Chris showed up at San Quentin to learn the domain and shape The Last Mile to be effective. They anchored the program in three core beliefs:

We are much more than our worst mistakes.

We all have redeemable qualities.

Finding a job is the key to breaking the cycle of recidivism.

Around the same time, the co-founders observed an opportunity in the market: Tech titans struggled to build a competent, diverse talent pipeline for the fastest growing sector in America, software engineering.

To fill this gap, TLM launched a training program in 2014 for software engineering called Code.7370. It’s an incubator that transforms inmates into coders inside San Quentin and prepares them for positions at tech startups.

“Coding and software engineering is one area where people are judged by the quality of their work and not by the stigma of their past,” said Chris Redlitz.

How It Works

Made up of two six-month tracks, the coding program takes participants a year to complete. “We look at people with three years to gate (i.e., time until release) or less, because technology skills, are always evolving,” explained Beverly.

“We have a zero tolerance policy—if anyone has an infraction while they are in our program, they are asked to leave,” said Beverly. “Good behavior is of high importance.”

One person, Chris Schuhmacher, was accepted into the coding program and described what it was like to learn how to code without the internet.

“We could only use the computers while we were in the classroom, but I would go home [to my cell] at night with a computer book, a number two pencil, and a notebook and practice writing algorithms and test problems,” he said. “And I couldn’t wait until the next day when I got into class and I could practice it out and see if it actually worked. And mind you, all of this learning was done without the use of the internet. So it was books, it was videos, it was tutors and mentors coming in from the outside teaching us. Which I think actually made our computer coding stronger, right? Because we didn’t have so much access to instant answers, we really had to do the work.”

After learning to code, high-performing students are offered the opportunity to join TLMWorks, a full stack software development shop inside San Quentin where inmates earn the highest wage ever paid in a prison—a respectable wage of $17/hour—working on web projects with clients.

After graduating at the top of his TLM class and delivering outstanding code at TLMWorks, Chris Schuhmacher was hired full-time as a software engineer at Fandom, a global entertainment media brand. Fandom is looking to hire more graduates as a result of their success with Chris.

Sounds Great. But Does It Work?

Exactly zero percent of TLM graduates have gone back to jail. The absolute success rate of the program has been noticed not just in the US, where the organization has scaled to eight facilities across California and Indiana, with more classrooms in Kansas and Oklahoma that opened in the last three months, but has also inspired other organizations across the world to model their prison programs after TLM. For example, across the pond in the UK, Code4000 states on their homepage: “Taking our inspiration from The Last Mile—an established prison coding programme that started in San Quentin but now runs in several prisons in California—we aim to teach people a life-changing skill and get them back into the job market.”

Scaling What Works

On January 11, 2019, Stand Together announced a $1 million investment in The Last Mile to rapidly expand the program and fuel its vision to open 50 Last Mile classrooms in prisons across the country over the next five years. “We’re proud to support and increase the impact of organizations with highly effective programs and services that are removing barriers and opening doors to those inside of prisons and for those reentering society,” said Evan Feinberg, executive director of Stand Together. “Through their effective and inspiring work to free people from the cycle of incarceration, The Last Mile is helping to break the cycle of poverty that traps 40-50 million people across the country.”

“We share a common vision with Stand Together, to break barriers and drive progress, and their partnership is invaluable,” said Beverly. “We are thankful to Stand Together for its commitment to us and belief in our ability to help incarcerated individuals prepare for a successful reentry.”

“Inside the classroom,” said Schuhmacher, “Beverly used to make us stand up and introduce ourselves as, ‘Hi, I’m Chris Schuhmacher. I’m a software engineer.’ Before it was ever true. But really, what it was doing was ingraining us to believe in the process and believe in ourselves.”

“For 23 years, I was known as inmate #H10983,” said another TLM graduate Kenyatta Leal. “Today, I’m known as a business development specialist... and a standup guy in my community.”

Join Stand Together in supporting The Last Mile, or find other innovative solutions to breaking the cycle of poverty that align with your passions or areas of interest at standtogetheragainstpoverty.org