Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 5 on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor and Transportation

The Senate Budget Subcommitee number five on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor and Transportation will now come to order. Good morning, all of you. Sorry we're running a little late. I have a lot going on the floor this morning. So thank you for hanging in there with us and participating. This morning.

We're holding our Committee hearings here in the Capitol. I ask that all Members of the Subcommitee be present in room 112 so we can establish a quorum and begin our hearing. Actually, today is an informational hearing, so we're not required to have a quorum.

And we have several Members who have meetings with the Governor and different things that are happening. But of course, they'll be getting all the notes and the information that we're having today. Today we're diving deeper into a few key issues.

Employee perspectives or staff or team perspectives at the CHP and the CDCR, and rehabilitation programming and job training for the incarcerated population at the state prisons. Today was something a little different. Typically in the budget sub hearings, we get Department supervisors who give us information on the budget, which we've had.

We've been pretty diligent, and I've had a great team here that has helped me to make sure we're hearing from all these different departments what they need.

But I really felt strongly that we needed to hear from the people who are actually doing the work, because I want to make sure that what I'm hearing from a department supervisor or director is actually reflective of what's happening in the field. So with that in mind, that's why we did this today. I hope you enjoy it.

I'm looking forward to hearing your perspectives, and I hope that you'll speak freely so that we can really get at what are the key things that are needed from a budgetary perspective. With that in mind, all issues on today's agenda are informational, as I stated, and the public comment will be taken at the end.

Before we begin, does anyone have any questions? Mr. Seyarto?

Yes. Want to give everybody a warning that I'll be stepping out. We have another hearing on defensible space, which is something that I like to weigh in a lot on. And so we have staff that is monitoring what you're talking about in here when I step out.

I don't want you to think that I'm not interested in what you have to say. I absolutely am. But I can't be two places at once. And that other place probably needs me to weigh in on the defensible space issues in California.

Thank you, Mr. Seyarto. So let's get started with the California Highway Patrol officer's perspective, Mr. Jake Johnson. He's President of the California Association of Highway patrolmen. Mr. Johnson, please come forward and you're free to begin.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee for this opportunity to give the perspective of the rank and file Members of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen. As the Madam Chair stated, my name is Jake Johnson. I'm an active, sworn, rank and file Member of the California Highway Patrol.

And I thank each of you for your desire to serve in the Senate, especially Senate staff who work diligently on this Committee. Your work does not go unnoticed by me and by those whom I represent.

I was elected by ... the President of the California Association of Highway patrolmen, which represents 6,900 active frontline men and women fulfilling the responsibility of keeping California safe. I also represent 9,500 retirees who previously dedicated decades of their lives to the people of this great state.

During my 23 years as a sworn officer, the CHP has taken on many additional general law enforcement duties throughout the state, truly becoming the State Police and no longer just the Highway Patrol. Recent years have brought even more responsibilities to the CHP. We have become the go-to department during times of local crisis and statewide catastrophe.

The CHP will play a vital role in upcoming Super Bowl, World Cup and the Olympics. We must recognize that all of these events will require significant amount of state resources to include CHP swarm personnel. The CHP has solidified itself as California's Police Department.

California Association of Highway Patrolman members have proudly taken on these new roles given to them by both the Governor and the Legislature. At the same time, these new assignments continue to stress staffing capabilities and require a significant amount of overtime.

Although the CHP has hired 1,000 new officers from 2022 to 2025, meaning the end of 24, the attrition rate during the same period has been just as high. I don't speak fully on behalf of my brothers and sisters at Cal Fire, but I know they have experienced critical staffing shortages similar to those at the CHP.

If the CHP is California's Police Department, Cal Fire has become California's Fire Department. Finding an avenue to keep our most experienced officers and firefighter professionals on the job is critical to public safety. In short, the CHP has lost mostly to retirement approximately 1000 sworn personnel during the same three-year period.

The CHP currently has 1000 sworn personnel eligible to retire today. An additional 1000 will become eligible to retire over the next three-year period. Along with Cal Fire, I participated in studying the most effective way to provide an incentive for our best and most experienced officers and firefighters to remain with their departments.

The idea of a deferred retirement option plan, commonly known as DROP, is not original. Specifically, DROP will allow individual officers and firefighters who are eligible for retirement to extend their careers for a predetermined amount of time. Our communities would benefit from these highly qualified employees staying in their critical posts.

DROP can be done in a cost-effective manner all during an important time of public safety and well within tight state budgets. DROP retirement type programs have been successful in many cities and counties to include the City of Fresno, City of LA, City of San Diego, San Francisco and San Luis Obispo County.

Places like the State of Arizona, Michigan and Maryland have operated successful DROP retirement programs for decades. Although we pulled the Bill from the Assembly yesterday regarding DROP, we continue to work with the Assembly PERS Committee on the future language and full collaboration over this two year legislative cycle.

I have a great desire to work with the Senate Budget Committee Members, Members of the Assembly PERS Committee, other Members of the Legislature, the Administration, including the leadership at CalPERS to implement a drop retirement program that is cost neutral and even cost beneficial to the state. We must do more to address the staffing deficit.

My firm belief is that a DROP program is a key solution to this problem. Lastly, the California Association of Highway Patrolmen is a capable and loyal partner to the Senate. We have a long history of working with this body for the improvement of those who live and visit our state.

I look forward to collaboration and cooperation on all the issues that affect the people of California. Each CHP officer has no greater desire than to serve a brother or sister from the public in need. I stand ready to answer any questions from the Committee. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson. Before we get into questions, if the consultant could call the roll so we can establish a quorum.

[Roll Call]

Consultant noting that there is a quorum present. Mr. Johnson, thank you for being here. Mr. Seyarto, did you want to start off with questions?

So thank you for your testimony today, giving us a little bit of a snapshot on what's going on, not just in your agency, but a lot of public safety agencies.

This is something when I was in my fire career we could see on the horizon, which was the boomers are retiring and a lot of them were hired very much in the same time span.

And so as all of them hit en masse their retirement ages, we're losing people faster than we can train them and get them on the job and recruit, train and get them on the job.

So are you seeing difficulties in the recruitment, training and getting them on the job to replace those thousand people that are going to leave this year?

And the thousand people, because recruit classes can only be so big and so you either need a lot of them and that's one of the things that we're going to have to look at in funding is because that costs money and we can't do without it.

Yes, there is a problem. I think it's well publicized with public safety recruitment for police and fire and recruitment is at issue for the CHP. However, I will say that the CHP has worked very well with the Legislature, both houses to access funding and the funding has been very good, now sufficient.

I probably can't speak to that because I don't have all the budgetary numbers for the CHP. But both houses have been very cooperative. I think hiring 1,000 people within that timeframe is something to be proud of. We did it in collaboration with both houses and then the Governor's office. So I think that's something to be proud of.

But you're correct Senator, it is not keeping up with the attrition. Which is why I provided, why I took the opportunity for the short time to just talk about a way, a way to try to retain our most experienced personnel over this time frame in a unique way like DROP to try to keep that, to try to keep our people on the job while we see if we can recruit enough people.

And keeping those, that the hierarchy or not the hierarchy, the higher ranking positions, the supervisor position, people in place for a little bit longer enables you to have the people that are being hired to get more experience so they can eventually take over those.

Because that's another issue we've had in the fire service is now, you know, we're putting two people with two years on the job in the captain's seat and or two or three years on the job in the captain's seat. Can you describe to us what that looks like from your guys' perspective?

Are you getting a lot of inexperienced supervisors if we don't have a program like this? And you know the perspective of also the when people are, when we have a short agency, what happens as far as fatigue, mental judgments, things like that to the rank and file when they're forced to work overtimes to cover shortages?

So the simple answer is yes, the supervision is less experience. And let me just speak to the career of a police officer, which I won't delve into firefighting. But there's some, there's some parallels between the two. But just because you're trained to be a police officer, it takes many, many years to build up your skill set.

A lot of that is how you communicate. You have thousands and thousands of contacts over a period of time with a very diverse group of people in California, and you learn things about culture, about experience, about people who need police services.

So even with 23 years, I still am out there infrequently, but I still get out there and I see things that I've never seen when I've worked in eight different places in California. So a life, a career of a police officer doesn't end until you retire. You continue to learn, and you need experience out there to mentor.

You need the experience, especially at the rank of officer and sergeant. The sergeant is the immediate supervisor. That is a very unique and important relationship because those are the people that are supervising what our rank and file police officers are doing every day. So I forgot the second part of the question.

Sorry, I should have probably addressed that first.

That was the effect of fatigue and mental judgment on when you're working too much overtime. I know everybody likes a little bit of overtime. I know we liked it in the fire service. We were okay with a little bit of overtime.

But once it got too much and you were working 20, 25 days out of the month of 24 hour shifts, you become less effective in the fire service.

For sure, I think that's very clear. I think there's plenty of studies out there that talk about fatigue and public safety. And it is of concern to me as the leader of the rank and file, that our men and women are out there too many hours working.

Some of it is voluntary, but if they don't, sometimes the employer calls it voluntary, but they have a contract. And so if they don't meet that contract, it becomes mandatory. So it appears to be voluntary because you kind of pick and choose what you work for overtime.

But eventually, the employer has a contract with a myriad of other businesses, including CalTrans and some other. And that has to be fulfilled. So we will mandate people to work, quote, unquote, what we call voluntary overtime. So it is of concern to me. Sure.

As blunt as I always am, sure our men and women enjoy a little bit of overtime. We all know it's very expensive to live in this state. But it has gotten to the point where I am concerned.

I'm concerned about those sending thousands of officers to the Olympics and what that does to another community who's down officers, because there's no doubt in my mind, just like APEC, that was that big conference in San Francisco. We sent a significant amount of resources. I work in Los Angeles County.

I find myself in San Francisco working security at APEC for a whole week. So it took me out of my role in LA County, which I've been assigned to, to go work in another area. And I realize Olympics is, not that often comes around, but it will require significant amount of resources.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of CHP officers will be deployed to Los Angeles during that. And so all that building up and all the fatigue of day in and day out, sure. It is of concern to me. You can only do so much as a human being to be out there and be at your highest level.

Thank you for that insight.

And I think it kind of points out to the issues that we have in the state with keeping our public safety agencies at the levels they need to be at in order to ensure that our employees are using good judgment out there, are doing the best that they can get and they're being safe over because that's it all comes, it's all hand in hand.

And that's of utmost concern for us is ensuring the safety of the public and the safety of the people providing that that service. So thank you so much for coming in today and giving us your testimony. Thank you for the question, Senator.

Thank you very much Mr. Seyarto. A few questions, Officer Johnson. One, I've noticed that there have been several accidents where officers have pulled someone over off the highway and then, you know, a car comes careening over and hits them and they're jumping over the guardrails.

And is there any other, besides putting on your lights and things like that. Are there any other things that have been found that could be done from an equipment perspective to better alert drivers that you guys have pulled someone over and to avoid these accidents?

Yes. So there is. I think the lighting could improve on patrol cars. When I travel around the US in this role we have, when I go back to even D.C. or I was in Jersey, I noticed that other police agencies have a Christmas tree of light.

Sometimes we used to call it the Christmas tree because it was diagonal, but we call it a Christmas tree of light. So I think the lighting can improve on patrol cars.

I've always considered it and I've had these discussions with my employer is about changing something, whether it's an internal policy or even a law where that officers use every opportunity to stop somebody off the freeway. I have found in my career I will follow somebody for a significant amount of time.

That sometimes creates a conversation when you try to stop somebody and then you indicate drive to the next exit and it's 3, 4, 5 miles. Sometimes it perturbs the person you're stopping.

But as I've explained to those individuals why we're getting off the freeway, I've never had anybody a future discussion about it or some disagreement about why we would stop off on the freeway or off the freeway, especially in rural, in your major metropolitan areas, there are a lot of exits on the freeway.

I would venture to say if you were driving through northern Los Angeles County and you saw me on a traffic stop, it would be off the freeway because I've learned those things. So I encourage my co workers around, but we don't have an internal policy that addresses that other than to be safe.

But, but that's for the motorists too, not just for the police officer. Because I'm not selfish in my view about protecting my own people.

That is we have had motorists killed, as you're alluding to, Madam Chair, off traffic stops on the freeway and even close to off ramps, where I've thought to myself, hey, had we just taken that person off the freeway.

I think as far as the traffic stops go, you can also go up, which I've gone up to cars before, and ask them to exit the freeway and continue the traffic stop off the freeway, which is unconventional, doesn't violate our internal policy, doesn't violate any rule or law.

But I've said, hey, can you take the next exit because of this reason, and then continued with my traffic stop off the freeway, I would love to work with, with the Legislature even further, with my employer to try to implement some better policies or even laws regarding that.

And I think we could work, we could work out with the Committee or whoever else is interested in working with us on that.

Thank you. I had not noticed that, but that's a very good point. You mentioned DROP. Can you share with us why you guys felt the need to pull it in the Assembly to the best of your knowledge?

Yeah. So we, we have been bold about our DROP presentation and even when we met with Assemblymember Gibson, who's carrying the Bill for us, who will continue carrying the Bill, we know that there are tight, tight budget constraints and so even in our language it says it shall, shall be cost neutral or cost savings to the state.

So as we had dialogue with the Committee consultant and the Committee chair, I want to be able to prove, I'm sorry if that's an aggressive word, but be able to illustrate. So I get bipartisan support, support from both houses and they believe with us that this will be cost neutral, minimum.

And by that I mean there might be administrative costs, but cost neutral to the PERS system, which will be the key.

And so as we had dialogue with the Committee Chair and the consultant, we thought it better to continue working with them, continue working with our own actuary that we have and through their liaison with PERS to try to have further dialogue.

So we can really believe in this because we recognize that this will the biggest question will come. They will get support to say, hey, yes, we would love to hire new fire or we would like to retain firefighters and cops. That sounds great, but what is going to be an effect on the budget?

So we felt like we could pull it back.

We still have a two year session, that we could reintroduce it in the next session, in three or four months, we could have further dialogue with the Committee and the Committee consultant and we could present it in a better way that rides smoothly with probably an urgency clause on it because we don't want to wait this two-year cycle.

But we think we can still do this with our dialogue with those stakeholders and individuals.

Well, Mr. Seyarto may join me in a little grin on this, but we get a whole lot of requests that aren't neutral, so don't be shy. I wish more of them were neutral, but in fact most of the time they're not.

So although it's commendable to want to be there, I think what's even more commendable is that we need, you know, safety. And so if that means we have to make a decision, then sometimes we have to make that decision.

When I was on the City Council in Long Beach, we were one of the first cities to vote on 3% at 50. And now, you know, that's very common and it did cost us. And certainly, you know, PERS programs are having a tough time being able to meet paying 3%, you know, at 50.

But it was the right thing to do for people who are risking their lives and, you know, going through a whole lot to be able to protect the public.

So I look forward to maybe working with you on that and feel free to approach my office as we move into the next year of maybe help on the Senate side. Just one other question for you that I wanted to ask. Are you familiar with the program Computer Crimes Investigation Unit?

We had a testimony here in the budget where they talked about there's 12 positions, I guess, in this program to combat child sexual abuse material and human trafficking in the state. Are you familiar with it?

Yes.

Okay. Do you find that additional resources would be helpful to, more could be done if there were more people who could be assigned to be helpful?

Yes, I do. And I watched. I don't think it was this Committee, but I watched the Public Safety, which was probably. I watched that Committee meeting when the CHP testified regarding that. And I understand there,

there's a pool of money and then the ICAC and then the CHP, who has done a smaller amount of cases over the time frame.

But I think this is relative to what I'm talking about, talked about the California Police Department is if you give us these roles, we will excel in them, and we should be more involved in this. The CHP should no longer be just known as the highway police. Children who are victimized.

It is, you know, the stats, they're horrendous. And the CHP should take a bigger role in doing that. And so we support it as a labor union, not because it produces more jobs. I think that's irrelevant. It's because this is truly a crime that is out of control and we need to curb it in California.

We make a lot of traffic stops. I've personally made traffic stops where teenagers were obviously in a bad position with an adult and return them to their parents. And so some of this.

I watched the Committee where it touched your heart to listen to some of the cases that they divulged, which are devastating more than just me returning a teenager to their parent or a young child to their parent who shouldn't be with an adult. But the crime is out of control.

And I fully support the Legislature providing the CHP with extra resources so we can save victims and put the bad men and women in jail or in prison for a long time.

Right. Thank you. I did want to have one last question, actually. Is there anything else? This is a perfect opportunity, you know, for you to share with us.

Are there any other areas, whether it be policy or budget, that you think would be helpful for this Committee to know that we could enable you and your Members to do the best job possible?

I think the Legislature,

And I asked the question so you can go back and say, well, she asked me.

Look, I don't think there's any dispute that both houses in the governor's office have attempted to fund the Highway Patrol as much as possible. I don't think there can be a dispute over it. When I travel the United States and talk to other labor unions, police labor unions, they've taken big hits.

And I don't think there's any doubt that over these. In this last five or seven years, or that, you know, this time frame where there was police reform and it was something that the Legislature was talking about.

And I would commend the Legislature because even though there was police reform and even though there was a lot of chatter about law enforcement and how we should conduct ourselves, they never defunded us. That was an allegation. I've defended the Legislature in front of the news media, too, to say the Administration never defunded us.

Both houses never defunded us because they believe in the mission of public safety. So I'll speak to that, too. You know, as a police organization, sometimes we get accused of not wanting police reform. And that's not a bad term to me. I don't see it as a bad term. We have to always be improving.

That's why we're here. That's why the Legislature exists, to protect people, to improve the lives of people. And so that's why we're all here. So I don't. When people say that word, sometimes it's a trigger word for cops. They go, oh, police reform. Oh, this is this. But it truly is.

It's a body of people trying to get together with us as their partners to try to make things better. And try. And we're all for that. Or as an organization, I often get asked about whether we need extra training. We'll take anything that you guys or anything that the Legislature provides to us, our employer gets us.

We'll never turn down an opportunity to train. And firefighters are like that, too. They train more than cops do. They are highly trained individuals. They train every single day. I see them. Sometimes I enter their place to use the restroom or try to steal their eggs and bacon, and they're always doing some training opportunity for them.

So I appreciate what the Legislature has done for the funding of the highway patrol.

Want to make sure that the blue chair is safe for the firefighters when they get back. Is that.

Well, Officer Johnson, on behalf of the Association that you represent, thank you for being here today. Thank you for your, I think you said, 23 years of service and this Committee, I take it pretty seriously. I want to make sure that you have what you need to be safe and to help us be safe as well.

So thank you for being here. I made a note. I look forward to working with you on the drop program and us getting that done. If not this year, next year, let's get it done and let's get more people in and get ready for Fifa, Super Bowl and the Olympics.

We're ready for it. We'll do a good job. I'll be working it myself. I'm sure.

I know. I'll be looking for you.

All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.

Okay. I'll see you there.

Thank you, staff.

Thank you.

All right. With that, we'll now move onto our second issue for the day. And that issue has to do with institutional employee perspectives. We're going to start with Dr. Navreet Mann, a psychiatrist at CDCR and a member of UAPD, followed by Dr. Aaron Cannon, a psychologist and member of AFSCME Local 2620.

And then finally, we're going to have Heather Markovich, a licensed vocational nurse and an SEIU Local 1000 bargaining unit chair. If the three of you would come forward, and we look forward to hearing your presentations. The same thing that I said when I kicked off this hearing.

This is an opportunity for us to really hear directly what's happening. And so feel free. We're asking you. It's not like you're telling. And you don't have to worry about all that. I'm asking you to be very frank and share with us what are your experiences, and is there any way, from a policy or budgetary perspective, we could help you to do your jobs more efficiently, safely, and also safely for yourself. So with that, we will start with Dr. Mann.

Good morning, Senator. First of all, thank you so much for inviting us to speak here. I feel quite unprepared because I've been here before but never been invited to talk about it. So I can't believe someone's actually listening. So thank you so much for doing that. I've been a psychiatrist with CDCR for 14 years.

I started out as a contractor. I've held various positions within CDCR. I worked at four different institutions, been a supervisor, been a chief, and, you know, worked at headquarters. So I feel like I've done a little bit of everything. One of the problems that I wanted to talk about that has impacted us over the years a lot more than it used to is contracting out, getting contract psychiatrists. You know, of course, the reason behind it, I feel, is the competitive pays that are, you know, offered to contractors and not to civil service psychiatrists.

Like I mentioned, I've been in CDCR for 14 years. I started out as a contractor. Back then, it just made sense for me to, you know, become a civil servant because of the benefits of the job. But, you know, of course, it also takes a special kind of person who wants to commit and doesn't want to just, like, move from position to position just looking for more money. But that has changed drastically over the years. Contract psychiatrists are making a lot more money than they ever have.

We've heard of psychiatrists made over $100,000 per month just working as contract psychiatrists. The problem with that is it is not a stable workforce. And I want to talk a little bit more about what does that mean. What does continuity of care mean? What does it mean to have a stable workforce?

But just in general, the reason it's not stable is if somebody else is going to offer you more money, you're going to move to that institution. If Department of State Hospital is going to offer you more money than that, then you're going to move there. And then let's say if there is an outside organization, not state, that is offering even more money than that, then you're going to want to move there. Because, you know, doctors come out with huge student loans. There is, they usually come out pretty poor, so they want to pay off those student loans.

You know, they do go after the money because it's absolutely necessary, otherwise they're drowning in debt. So I don't blame the contractors. I want to make that really clear. I worked with great contractors. They've been my friends. A lot of my civil servant psychiatrists have moved to become contractors, again, kind of following the money.

What is the problem with contractors and continuity of care? We talk a lot about this, but I wanted to just explain it a little bit. What we do as psychiatrists is very different from what maybe an emergency room physician does or an anesthesiologist does. What they're doing is they get a patient, they stabilize the patient or keep the patient stable during surgery, you discharge them. Now it is the problem of the primary care physician or the psychiatrist to take care of those patients.

When those patients come out, it is our job to keep them stable so they don't get to that position of being in a crisis. The problem with not having a stable workforce is you don't establish that rapport with the patients. And our patients for mental health are very different.

You really need to build a relationship with those patients. They have to be able to trust you for you to even be able to treat them. And just as a reminder, we work in the prison, so they're not always the safest of patients. So establishing that trust with that patient is really important.

Contractors usually are not able to stay long enough at one institution to establish that rapport. And sometimes just knowing that they're going to be moving on pretty quickly, they don't engage in or in treatment decisions that are complicated or difficult because they know they won't be able to follow up.

They won't be able to follow up with the patient. So they try to sort of do the easy things and just sort of keep the patient afloat, not actually fix the problems. And that ends up, you know, having a huge patient population that is not as stable as we would like to be.

Now, there's two problems with that. One, for a mentally ill patient, every time they have a crisis, they almost never return to their pre-crisis functioning. And I'm talking about mostly the sicker patients with schizophrenia or delusions. They will not return to that pre-crisis functioning.

What that does is when it is increasing the cost for the state because now every time they have a crisis, not not only are we treating that crisis, putting more money into that than you would for preventative care, but you're also spending more money after the fact dealing with a patient who is now sicker than they were before.

And then the second thing is our goal is to rehabilitate these patients. If these patients are stable and they're getting worse, their functioning is getting worse over the years, it is dangerous to finally expect those patients to be able to come out in the community and be our neighbors. So it is a bigger problem.

I wanted to talk about this because we mention it, but it is really hard to make that connection. But I wanted to explain that connection today. UAPD has over the years asked for information from CDCR about how many contractors we have, what kind of money is being spent. It is my understanding, based on what we've been told over the years, and I know it keeps changing from CDCR, that CDCR has a completely separate sort of pool of money that they use to pay for contractors.

So even though to the public it seems like we're only spending this much money on the state prisons, there is this unlimited pool of money that is going into state prisons and is actually going to this unstable workforce that really isn't helping in the long run. In fact, I feel like sometimes making the situation so much worse. Thank you.

Thank you. This is very helpful. I'll have several questions, but I want to make sure we get through everyone. Next, we will have Dr. Cannon.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Aaron Cannon. I'm a clinical psychologist. I work at Donovan State Prison in San Diego, California. I've been a civil servant for the last 18 years. It is an honor and a privilege to be here this morning representing AFSCME 2620. We are bargaining unit 19.

And we are lucky, I think, to live in a time where we profess to understand the importance of mental health treatment, of taking care of our homeless, of social justice. But I rarely hear people ask the seemingly obvious question, who? Who does that work? Well, we do that work. We are your psychologists.

We are your social workers, your rec therapists. We are your pharmacists, dieticians, physician's assistants, chaplains, spiritual leaders. Apologies for all the people I left out. We represent a lot of people. And I'm reminded of the two years during Covid when we woke up every day and we went to work, we went to prison, and we put on those protective, personal protective equipment.

We put on the masks and the gloves and the hats and the boots and the gowns, and we went into those Covid infested housing units and gymnasiums and we went cell to cell checking on our patients. We went bunk to bunk in the gyms, checking on our patients and treating them. Treating their mental illness.

I can tell you that over the last 18 years, I have worked in almost every imaginable condition. I have worked in closets. I have worked in condemned trailers, literally condemned, not figuratively condemned. I have worked in leaky gymnasiums where when it rains, there's a trash can every three feet to catch the water that's streaming through the roof, bringing with it everything that exists between heaven and earth. I have worked in housing units, not just go to a housing unit to find a patient, but worked in housing units where it's 40 degrees during the winter and 110 degrees during the summer.

And I can tell you that it almost doesn't matter when you work in prison where you work because there are some things that are always the same, and that is the banging and the yelling and the screaming and the urine and the feces and the blood and the spit and the pepper spray and the tarantulas and the rattlesnakes and the violence. Real violence, physical violence, threats of violence, sexual violence.

I saw once... This is crazy that this is true. I once had a patient that I watched carted off the yard after a riot with a shank sticking out of his eyeball like that one character from Pirates of the Caribbean. Remember the guy with a fork? It looked exactly like that.

It was the craziest thing I've ever seen. Those are things that we see all the time. And then we get to go and treat that patient who clearly is experiencing psychological distress and emergency. They just tried to kill him. That's us. Those are our people. That's what we do.

With these winning conditions, it's easy to understand why it's difficult for CDCR to recruit and retain mental health staff. And I think Dr. Mann actually underplayed the importance and the significance of continuity of care. Because when you meet with a new patient, their first question is, are you a contractor?

And if the answer is yes, they are not going to engage with you because they know that you're going to be gone next week, next month. These contractors, some of them are wonderful people, but they come in and they make two and a half times, three times more than we make.

And we have a lot of civil servants who leave civil service and become contractors, because why wouldn't you? Right? We have the student loans, we're trying to afford homes. We have doctors who have worked for the state for 10 plus years who are living in tiny little apartments because they can't afford a house.

That's shameful if you ask me. That's embarrassing if you ask me. I have spent countless hours on the phone with patients' families. Families who are desperately praying that their loved one, when they come to prison, will engage with the Mental Health Program so that they can get better. We forget that our patients go home.

I forget what the number is. 80%, 90%. But most inmates parole, most inmates go home. And when they do, if we do our job well, they go back and they are contributing members to their families, to their communities, to their societies, to their, to their schools, to their workplaces.

But if we do our job poorly, if we somehow fail in our efforts to rehabilitate, when they go home, they engage in crime, they commit more crimes. And whenever an inmate comes back to prison, that means that there is another victim somewhere. And that's our goal, really. No more victims.

People sometimes ask, Aaron, what are you doing there? You've been there for 18 years. People think about treating mental illness in the prison population as a privilege that's not necessarily afforded to everybody in society. But they miss the fact that people go home. And when they go home, if we've done our job well, they don't reoffend.

But if we've done our job poorly, when they go home, they reoffend and there's more victims. And that's our goal. No more victims. So what's the ask, ladies and gentlemen? Why are we here? We need help. We've been asking for help for, I don't know how long, 18 years? 20 years? 30 years?

The Coleman case that some people are familiar with has been going on for 35 years. Can you imagine? 35 years. That, again, is embarrassing. We can't get this under control. It's been 35 years. Increased compensation. Obviously everybody asks for increased compensation.

It's difficult to justify to family and friends why you're a civil servant when you know that contractors are making three times more that you're making. Actual buildings. Climate controlled facilities in the prisons where we can have offices and treat our patients.

We sometimes joke when it's 110 in the summer, can you believe that there are people right now working in climate controlled environments? It blows you away, especially when you've been sitting there for years and years and years drenched in sweat, right? You've got the stab vest on. The inmates come in, they're like, what is wrong with you?

It is an honor, ladies and gentlemen, and a privilege to be asked. I am humbled truly to be asked to come and represent the members of AFSCME 2620. Their dedication and commitment to their craft and their patients I think is seldom seen. And as I say, it's an honor and I'm humbled to be here to represent them. Thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for listening.

Thank you very much. And with that, now we'll move to Ms. Markovich.

Thank you for allowing us to come here. I started my career with the Department of Corrections in 1993 as an MTA. We had dual licensure. We all had to be either an LVN, a psych tech, or an RN. And we also carried around a badge because we were in custody. The receiver came in.

I was gone for eight years because my husband was active duty Air Force and was transferred overseas. But I came back in 2006 as a contractor and came back as a state employee in 2007. We have a lot of mandatory overtime. You don't want your nurses to be mandated to work a 16 hour shift.

You're going to have a lot of medication errors. Like these other two we're talking about, we have a lot of contractors here. I'm here as the bargaining unit 20 chair, which gives me a lot of insight because I don't just represent the Department of Corrections. I also Department of State Hospitals and CalVet.

And we have been advocating for years to eliminate mandatory overtime. And we've been doing this since 2003. In 2016, we had a joint labor management task force started, which we started in 2017 to eliminate or reduce mandatory overtime. Governor Schwarzenegger and Governor Brown vetoed legislation to make that happen.

But there is a state law for nurses that work in the private sector that they're not able to mandate it. How does Kaiser and Sutter get nurses to work when they're short staffed? They offer them incentives. They offer them money. We do not get that. We don't even get a decent shift differential.

When we work weekends, holidays, the RNs get 60 cents per hour. And it has been that for years. When you look at other facilities, Kaiser and things, shift differentials are anywhere between 5 and 20% of your base salary. That's wrong that the state does this.

In this report that we did, which was between with the state on mandatory overtime and getting the reduction, we found out a lot of information. It's actually disturbing. CCHCS spent $138 million this year in registry. Since 2014, they have spent $1.18 billion with management solutions on registry classifications. That's just not RNs, LVNs, CNAs. That's the doctors too.

$1.18 billion. That's a lot of money. In the report that we did, there was an RN at Avenal State Prison in one month made $30,897 for a month's work. An LVN made 14,318. A CNA made $9,033. That's anywhere to 2.5 to 1.9% more than a state employee. They get better working hours. They're not mandated to work weekends.

They're not mandated to work holidays. They get to set their schedule. While your state employees who are invested in making sure that we provide the best medical care to our incarcerated population are told you can't have a day off. We don't have the staff. You want to go home.

So when we calculated the amount of mandatory overtime last year for each of the classifications, when they gave us a list of the total number, divided it by 8, which would give you a shift. 840 Certified Nursing Assistants, 1847 LVNs, 2,681 registered nurses were mandated.

What that means is at the end of your eight hour shift, you're not allowed to go home. Management comes to you and says you will stay another eight. I don't care what you have planned. If you do not stay, you are going to get paperwork, which means a letter of instructions.

And if you do enough of them, guess what? You're getting an adverse action, which means they're going to take sometimes 5% of your pay for a year and you're going to get this in your paperwork for three years. And the Department of Corrections, I'm sorry, it's very formidable. You walk in, that gate slams behind you.

You have to rely on an officer to push that key to let you out. You don't know what's going to happen to you that day. You know we have a clause in our contract that says they don't negotiate if you're held hostage. So you don't know what's going to happen on that day.

You do not know if you're going to go home. You do not know if the inmate has made a manufactured weapon that's going to go into your back. Some are able to wear protective vests, but that only covers your front chest. And to find out that registry are getting so many more benefits.

I saw a paycheck from an LVN that worked up at Pelican Bay. Her stipend for one week, not including her hourly wage, was $2,000. My base pay at 24 years with working for the Department is just over 6,000 before you take any taxes out, before you take out any medical. How do we survive? We've asked for raises, we've asked for stipends. We don't get it.

And it's very, very frustrating. We're missing events. Department of Corrections, like police officers, we have a high rate of suicide and divorces because we're there. We bond with our co-workers and we cannot leave the facility and go home and have a normal conversation with our family members. They don't understand what goes on behind the wire. And then to find out that this person that we're working next to is making double the amount of money. They don't get mandated.

It's just not right. And then they dictate your staffing levels. They don't even let our local management determine where our nurses should be working. This is all done at headquarters. Why? We have what we call our TTA, which is our emergency room. Two people, two RNs to go wherever we have an incident.

And when I say an incident, I'm talking you don't know what you're going to. It could be a hanging, it could be a stabbing, it could be a fight out of the yard. And you have to drop what you're doing, grab a big green bag and run and hope that the scene is clear by the time you get there and try and figure out what you have to do and then bring that patient back to the TTA. We need money.

We need to be able to recruit. Part of the process and the problem with recruiting people is it takes forever to do the recruitment process. We need to be able to recruit people in less than 30 days. People, nurses is a shortage. I saw an article in the newspaper that there was 6,000 people that applied for an RN program. The acceptance rate was 1%.

So if we are competing with the Department of Corrections to bring in new nurses, we need to be able to pay them considerably the same amount as outside because we want to bring these people in. Not have contract staff that they're going to go where the money is. We were there during COVID We were there with the mask. Department of Corrections and CCHCS, I don't know if you know this, but during COVID we had mandatory COVID testing twice a week.

If we did not have a COVID test, we were written up. We were given letters of instruction for not doing a COVID test during that period of time. No questions asked. You didn't come, you didn't get it done, here's your paperwork. So we need... We need shorter times, we need alternate work schedules.

We need to be able to if we want work 12 hour shifts. We need competitive salaries. We need to use the registry appropriately. Requiring them to work weekends, holidays. They just don't get to work day shift Monday through Friday, where we're always stuck on weekends. We have some people that because of our schedule, have not had weekends off on their schedule for years.

So in closing, I hope this information that I've shared with you will guide your decision making process with the state budget for the recruitment and retention of permanent nursing staff and will help eliminate mandatory overtime. And lastly, I hope the numbers that I've shared with you for the registry contracts make it clear that the state is spending an excessive amount of money and resources that could be utilized for permanent nursing staff.

Thank you very much. Well, I had a feeling, but listening to all of you confirms some of what I thought we would hear today. Let me start off first with Dr. Mann. Can you explain to me this whole contracting thing, how does that process work or why does it exist? If I ask them, well, why do you have this whole contracting, are they going to say because we can't hire enough people, so it's our backfill? Or can you give me a little more details?

That is usually what it is. The other interesting thing is I don't think you would ever get the accurate numbers because we can't. We cannot get the most accurate information about how many contracts or contractors are out there. What I hear a lot from our management, and I've heard it over the years, is there's a nationwide shortage of psychiatrists. Which is true, but you're able to fill the exact same positions with the same psychiatrists who just want to work as contractors. So there's something there that maybe we need to focus on. It's not that people are not willing to work. It's just that you're not paying them the competitive salaries that they would make as contractors.

And your understanding is that contractors make more than yourself?

A lot more, yes.

Wow. And why is that? Or why are you told?

Yeah, nobody will tell us anything. But, you know, we're under a lawsuit. We have certain staffing requirements, and CDCR needs to make sure that we show that those positions are filled. So when you don't have enough civil service, you're filling them up with contract psychiatrists. And it is absolutely true, like my colleague said, here we are. Contractors do get better hours. They get better. They get sort of preferential treatment. They even get offices that most civil servants don't to see their patients. Which is kind of what I think is the reason.

And what facilities do you work at?

So I have worked in the past at San Quentin State Prison, California State Prison Sacramento in Folsom, Stockton Healthcare Facility. I worked at Mule Creek State Prison, and currently I work at headquarters.

And when you're providing specifically because the type of work that you provide, you know, is to people who are not well, do you feel safe? Have you ever been attacked or approached or...

I have been attacked once, and I have felt extremely unsafe at one point, which actually was the reason I quit my job at CSP Sacramento. My attack was a very sick, mentally ill patient. I think this was my first six months within CDCR. The patient was just very ill. Basically, I had to just run out and get them emergency treatment at that point.

Do you have radios?

We do have radios, which are sometimes not available and sometimes not working.

Okay, thank you. And Mr. Cannon, you mentioned some pretty horrific situations. Banging, yelling, violence, rats, snakes.

The tarantulas are the worst.

How do they get in there? I mean, does someone bring them in or they're just.

No, most of our prisons are sort of out in the wilderness and so this is just a part of the natural environment. The rattlesnakes as an example, you can find them in the parking lot.

I remember coming in to RHU they call it now ad seg, we called it back then, and there was a rattlesnake under one of my colleagues desks. We had cubicles in the housing unit, on the housing unit floor. That's where we worked. This desk with a cage, a therapeutic module next to us.

And the officers would go and get our patients out of the cells and bring them to us. But yeah, you walk into a housing unit and you'll see rattlesnakes, you'll see tarantulas, you'll see all the fun things that I mentioned.

And is your experience the same as what Dr. Mann explained in terms of contracting work?

Yes, absolutely. The positions that are available, the mental health staffing positions, are court ordered. The Coleman court has ordered these ratios and these mental health positions. And it is very, very difficult. I was going to say it's impossible.

It's not impossible, but it's very, very difficult to fill those with civil servants when you're making half a third of what a contractor would make and many of these contracting agencies. So I'll just give you real numbers. I know contractors, psychologists that are making $180 an hour at the top of the pay scale.

For civil servants it's $80 an hour. And that's what the contracting agency is paying the contractor. What is the state paying the contracting agency? It is impossible to find out. We have asked and asked and asked. But that would tell the tale, wouldn't it?

If the state is paying these contracting agencies $300 an hour for these psychologists, you could double my salary tomorrow and including benefits, you would still be saving 100 bucks an hour and you would be able to fill these positions so quickly.

When I started in 2007, the receiver had stepped in and unilaterally raised almost doubled salaries for mental health staff, and we were flush with staff for a couple of years. And then slowly but surely everybody else caught up and passed us. It doesn't seem like I'm going to say it this way.

AFSCME is not one of the larger organizations. We're smaller organizations, and so we don't often have the pull that some of the larger organizations have and we feel that at times when our requests are ignored. And yeah, you live in a place like San Diego.

You live in a place like Sacramento or San Jose or Los Angeles or San Francisco, and you're a civil servant. It is very, very difficult to pay the bills. I used to joke, I'm just trying to figure out how to pay for health care in Little League. That was my struggle.

That has been my struggle as a parent for years and years and years and years working for the state. I'm just trying to figure out how to pay for health care and Little League. So we take two jobs.

There have been times when I've had four jobs and I've never had less than two jobs just to make ends meet.

And again, on some level that's embarrassing for the state that our civil servants have to work 2, 3, 4 jobs just to live in the places where they live so they can go to the facilities where they work at.

Agreed.

You would ask one other question. I apologize for interrupting, but you had asked Dr. Mann another question about safety. I, too, have been assaulted. And it was a very, very sick patient who was very, very psychotic.

And in that situation, I was lucky enough to get out of the office that I was in, and I was hitting my alarm, which is really just a garage door opener from the 80s, and it didn't work. It didn't exist. No alarm sounded. I'm fumbling for my whistle.

And I was lucky that there was another psychologist in the trailer at the time who ran next door where the officers were and got them, and they were able to come and subdue this attacker. But who knows if that person hadn't been there, what that would have looked like eventually.

And those are things that make your heart race every time you walk into a prison and they close the Sally port behind you and you're looking at the sign that says, we don't negotiate if there's a hostage situation.

Those are things that you just sort of, I guess, get used to over the course of 18 years, but it doesn't make them less real. There's still a reality for those of us who work in prison systems. We love our CCPOA partners.

They've kept me safe for the last 18 years, but they're the ones with batons and the pepper spray and the colleague.

We sit alone in offices with convicted rapists, murders, and serial killers for hours at a time trying to treat mental illness, trying to help these people, because, like I said earlier, they go home and we want them to go home and not create more victims. That's our goal. Thank you.

Do either of you find that where you work? Are they actual hospitals where people are receiving mental health care? We have inpatient programs. Okay, and then my last question for Ms. Markovich, is the registry used in the same way as the contracting that Mr. Mann and. I'm sorry, Ms. Mann and Mr. Cannon described?

Oh, yes, our registry. We have to. You have to have a nurse to pass medication. If you don't have a body to pass that medication, you have to have registry. We do a lot of voluntary overtime. We do a lot of voluntary overtime.

And then to be mandated on top of that, and then have these registry come in and they're getting paid more. They get to pick and choose what days they want. When we go to management, they're like, yeah, we have to guarantee them 40 hours as part of the contract. And we're like, why?

And my facility that I work at, when I started in 93, we were the only institution in the State of California that had HIV positive inmates. So because of that, we have a 17 bed hospice. We have an outpatient housing unit which is like a step down unit.

They're not healthy enough to be out on the main line, but they don't require 20 total 24 hour nursing care. We have three units or two units that are strictly medical units. And we have a large psychiatric program.

We have a large mental health crisis bed unit, which anytime an inmate comes up to you and says, I feel suicidal, our response is, okay, we have to keep you in front of us, we have to initiate a protocol, and then we have to watch you one on one until the psychiatrist or the psychologist come in and say he's stable enough to go back to his housing unit or transfer into a psychiatric unit, which means for eight hours and is very difficult for eight hours to sit in front of a cell door, look at an inmate through a window, and have to document every 15 minutes are they sleeping, are they eating?

And they can have some really bizarre activities that you're like, okay, we have IEX sexual predators that they have no problem. And I, I guess there's no easy way to say it, but they do masturbate in front of you. They've done it in front of the clinical workers. They. They have.

And it's part of what these guys are then treating them for. But that is stuff that we are exposed to on a daily basis. Sometimes we're medicating out of an old broom closet, and that's where Our med cart is we're giving them all the medications that's been prescribed within what they have. But that is our work environment.

We have had garbage bags taped to the ceiling so that when it leaks, it runs into a trash can. It's hot, it's muggy. We don't have air conditioning unless it's a brand new wing, which is very. And with psychiatric patients, we have heat meds. So we get a list of, okay, these guys are on heat meds.

We have to watch to make sure that they don't overheat, because if they overheat on a psychiatric medication that is going to be detrimental to their health. So there's a lot of things that we have to worry about, not on top of the manipulation that we get.

When you go to work, you have your cell phone, your family calls you, guess what, you pick it up. Okay, yeah, this is what I'm doing. We're not allowed to have cell phones. We have to leave all that in our car.

We're not really supposed to have one on one conversations to get to know the patients or the inmates very well because you don't want to get into that position where they know a lot about you. So. So that's very standoffish. And it's a really hard environment to go to.

And when you go home and you want to tell your spouse about, oh, this is what happened today, they're like, yeah, yeah, right. Well, I don't want to listen to this because it's the same thing, but we just don't feel like we've been valued by the state.

We were there during COVID We were there 24/7 for the patients, because we still realize that these are human beings. These are. Yes, they made a bad mistake, they're paying for it, but there's a lot of people out on the streets that have done that same behavior, and they just haven't got caught yet.

So we need the state to help us with pay to bring qualified people to the table and not rely on registry. $1.18 billion, that's a lot of our taxpayer money going to people that really aren't that invested. They're going where the money is.

Right. Well, Dr. Mann and Dr. Cannon and Ms. Markovich, I really appreciate the frankness that you've shared with us today. I almost feel like I ought to apologize on behalf of the state for really not, you know, providing you the best as you're trying to do your best.

I will say that, of course, I'm sure you understand we're limited. I don't control in terms of pay rates and things like that. That is negotiated. However, there are some things that you said that we can look at, such as mandatory, you know, overtime and, you know, registries and, you know, that's what we call pay equity. Right.

So a lot of things that you've been able to share with us today have been very, very helpful. So I thank you for your time. I wish you well. I'm doing my best to be informed in this position.

So as we look at the budget, we can kind of pull some of these things out and do our best to. To educate others of why we need to make certain adjustments. This is a very tough year. I want to be very honest with you.

Between the fires and the administrative things that are happening on the federal level, we're just hoping we can keep things afloat at this point. But California, we always figure it out and we always do very well as a state. So I'm committed.

Which is why, why I wanted to have this hearing, to understand how we could be more helpful to you. So thank you for your time, and I look forward to seeing you again.

Thank you. I just have one thing.

Yes, ma'am?

We do have a flyer here on mandatory overtime with our report. Can I give you this? And yes, if you give.

Yes.

Where you can scan it and you can actually get the reports that were written.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here and taking the time. Okay. With that, we're now going to move on to issue number three. Issue number three. We're going to start with Sydney Tanimoto, Deputy Director of the Division of Rehabilitation Programs at CDCR. If you would please come forward.

And also in order to save time, I'd like to welcome up Kenneth Hart Hartman, Executive Director as well. And then I think we have Kelopi, Korea, from LAND together. I'm sure I butchered the name a little bit, so. To my head and not my heart. Pardon? Oh, okay. That's beautiful. Very different.

You got my name perfectly.

Wow. It's a miracle. Mine, too. Oh, good. Thank you. So who would like to start?

I am happy to go. Then pass on my partners. Thank you, Madam Chair, for having me here today. My name is Sydney Tanimoto. I am the Deputy Director of Operations with the Division of Rehabilitative Programs with cecr. First, I just want to acknowledge and thank my partners who are sitting at the table with me.

Both TPW and LAND together are valuable partners who really work hard to bring incredible services into our prisons and provide much needed services to our population. So I wanted to start by expressing gratitude. Firstly, our goal as CECR is to encourage participation in rehabilitation using a holistic approach which includes education, job training and rehabilitative programs.

Rehabilitation efforts improves the safety of CDCR staff and incarcerated individuals and has been shown to reduce recidivism once they return to our communities. The agenda does a nice job of laying out the different types of rehabilitative programs offered in California's prisons.

I would just like to emphasize CACR provides foundational rehabilitative services at every institution which includes adult basic education, higher education, and integrated substance use disorder treatment.

For a lot of our incarcerated people there has been significant challenges and trauma in their life which is reflected not just in their incarceration status but also in the average rating level of sixth grade and roughly 41% of incarcerated people with an assessed substance use disorder treatment need.

Education and substance use disorder treatment are the cornerstones to rehabilitation. However, we recognize those are only one piece to the whole person care approach.

In addition to the education and substance use disorder treatment offered by CDCR, we have valuable partnerships with community based organizations and volunteers who come into California's prisons to provide integral services to our incarcerated population. These programs provide the incarcerated population with reentry support, trauma healing and restorative justice programs.

This includes powerful programs around victim awareness, re entry planning, garbage gardening, life skills and accountability, dog training programs and many others. It's important to note rehabilitation is an individualized journey that often takes place in stages. Through our programmatic offerings, we aim to incentivize our incarcerated people to be an active participant in their own rehabilitative outcomes.

One of the most effective incentives we use is to offer various credits to the incarcerated population enabling them to earn time off their sentence. The five buckets of credit types are outlined in your agenda.

I would just like to highlight specifically the Milestone Completion Credit or MCC, the Rehabilitative Achievement Credit or RAC, and the Educational Merit Credit or EMC, as these are often the credits earned through participation in programming. Each of these credits has a corresponding credit earning rate.

By earning the credit, it signifies an incarcerated person achieved a specific threshold in their rehabilitative journey. We have found credits to be a critical tool to incentivize participation in rehabilitative programs. CDCR releases an annual statewide recidivism report and recently released the latest report examining our 2019-20 cohort.

The data reflects a 39.1 recidivism rate, which is the lowest rate, which is the lowest three year conviction rate since reporting began. Even more profound, the Recidivism report found Incarcerated individuals with MCCs, EMCs and RACCs have a recidivism rate of just 14.8%. Holistically, these programs work.

I would also like to highlight the meaningful steps we have taken in partnership with the Legislature Fund rehabilitative programs which ultimately supports both our incarcerated population and our staff. The research is bearing out what we already know. Investment rehabilitative programs reduces recidivism and makes our community safer. Thank you.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Nice to see you, Senator. And thank you for signing on to our budget request. Appreciate it. So I'm Kenneth Hartman. I'm the Executive Director for Transformative Programming Works. I also served 38 years in the California prison system and I've been out for about seven years now.

TPW represents over 100 community based organizations providing high quality rehabilitative programs collectively in all of CDCR's prisons on every facility. I personally benefited from some of the programs that are now Members of TPW that I representing here today. The Wright Grant, which stands for Rehabilitative Investment Grants for Healing and Transformation funds these community based organizations.

Programs run by CBOs foster personal transformation through a diverse array of interventions. They offer gender responsive and trauma informed programs, restorative justice programs, violence intervention, family reunification, emotional literacy, entrepreneurship, employment training, yoga and mindfulness practices, arts and music programs, and believe it or not, a lot more. I could go on and on. I stopped talking.

They provide people in prison with the tools for self improvement. They helped me. That's how I was able to get out and feels like I'm doing pretty well. Healing and accountability. Investment in these programs creates safer communities and reduces recidivism rates. As Ms.

As Ms. Tanimoto just said a moment ago, all the way down to like 14%, which is really quite remarkable compared to what we were looking at just 10 years ago, which was when recidivism was like in the 70% range. So the majority of these programs are eligible for rehabilitative achievement credits.

And participants in these programs have the lowest recidivism rates across CDCR. While CDCR provides rehabilitation services primarily around education, mental health, wellness and substance use disorder, everything else comes from CBO led programs like our Member organizations or volunteer groups like AA and NA, which I was also a longtime Member of AA while inside.

This year we are requesting a $20 million allocation for the Wright grant to ensure we can sustain these programs. There remain many long waiting lists throughout the state and last year the amount of Money that was funded was much lower than we had hoped for.

You know, we know there are, we know there are staffing problems that raise the cost of this, but we just want to say that outside program providers with clearance do not need to be escorted by custody staff. This is kind of an internal problem, but we think that's what's one of the things that's driving up the costs.

Programs do not need to be directly managed by staff. In fact, it's usually a bad idea. Custody staff operate with a different ethos and mandate. Understandably, they are there for a different function than people that are there to provide programs. Program providers are healers and teachers.

The presence of non program staff upsets the delicate balance necessary to conduct a rehabilitation program. We also think it's a huge cost savings to manage it somewhat differently. Investment in the Right grant allows for the prioritization of gender responsive and trauma informed programming in women's prisons. By directly incentivizing CBOs to provide programs to incarcerated women.

It allocates extra points to organizations serving special populations such as incarcerated women as well as people in rural facilities. Which is actually most prisons are in rural facilities, those in administrative segregation and Opportunities and Opportunities offers opportunities for new programs.

Rehabilitative programs funded by the Wright grant are essential to addressing the unique needs of incarcerated men and women to help facilitate their successful reintegration into society.

These community led programs help break cycles of incarceration, give incarcerated people the opportunity to heal from trauma and strengthen family ties to their communities as well, which has been proven to foster long term stability and improve reentry outcomes.

Rehabilitated programs also create safer prison environments for everyone, staff included, as they transform not only individuals but also the culture inside prisons. The more programs that are on a prison yard, the less likely there is to be problems on that yard. And that's great.

Studies have shown that investigating, investing, investing in community led rehabilitative programming is the right choice for California. Thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Hello, my name is Kaliope Korea and thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I serve as the regional lead for the Central Valley and Southern California programs with Land Together. Formerly called the Insight Garden program. Land Together is a community based organization led by formerly incarcerated and system impact people.

We work at the intersection of environmental justice and Criminal Justice Reform, using nature as a tool for transformation. Our 48 week RAC accredited program runs in nine California State prisons. We teach both inner and outer gardening, combining mindfulness, eco literacy and emotional healing with hands on permaculture and landscape design design.

We also provide life skills training and communication, conflict resolution, and goal setting. Crucially, we know that successful re entry begins long before release. That's why our curriculum includes re entry planning and we offer six months of individual pre release coaching and case management.

So basically we follow people with through their journey from during incarceration through reentry and as long as they need us. This continuity of care is essential for long term success. As a registered horticultural therapist, I've spent the past eight years going inside California prisons, witnessing firsthand how nature heals and transforms.

I've seen people reconnect with themselves through a single lavender flower. The scent reminds them of something from the past or a piece of themselves that they've long since lost. And it brings that back. I've seen people laugh in awe as broccoli bolts bright yellow. These small moments grow into lasting change inside and beyond the walls.

I myself live in a city, Fresno, that is deeply affected by disconnection and violence. Just last week a father was shot and killed in front of his kids two blocks from my home.

I have a 15 year old daughter who attends public school and I want her to grow up in a world built on care and love, not fear. That world is bridged by many communities and connections which is impacted deeply through this work. That's what Land Together is about. Bringing flowers, hope, and healing into the harshest places.

Just last week I worked alongside a participant at CCWF, the women's prison in Chowchilla who had just been granted parole after 40 years.

As we pulled weeds, laughed and talked about the future, a hummingbird perched on the razor wire above us, a small but powerful reminder of beauty and possibility and also the beauty that nature has to heal people on the deepest level. Our work creates ecosystems of care, addressing the root causes of harm and providing long support for healing.

We're not just planting gardens, we're rebuilding lives and communities and I thank you for your time and for supporting this life. Vital, life changing work.

Thank you. Well.

I have several questions here, but I think I'm going to throw them out and you guys decide who you think is best qualified to answer. First of all, is it possible to provide us with a list of all the programs that are available at all the facilities?

Yes, we received that request. We're working on it. We're happy to follow up with staff following this.

Okay, thank you. And in particular the gardening program. Is there a reason why that program isn't everywhere or. She indicated nine, I think, but yeah.

So and I can start off if you want to finish. There are many variables. I would say one big piece of it is where the program providers are interested in providing the services. And there's two pieces. So one is if you are a grant funded provider. It depends. We have limited resource on that.

The other piece is the volunteer led, if that's the place that you had wanted to provide those services. So really we try to work with providers to see where you are interested in going and having those services and providing that support in that space.

But happy to pass to my partners if they have anything to add to that.

We have interest and we would be at every single facility in California if we had the money to fund that.

Okay, so if I'm hearing you correctly, it's the grantee, the person, the organization that receives the grant has the opportunity to decide what type of program they would want to have at the facility.

Kind of, I think kind of is a good caveat because we do have a number of different grants. So for example, one grant is called Victim Impact, where the focus is really about how does this program create that restorative justice around the victim awareness. Right.

And so having that's $1 million, which $1 million doesn't go too far across a number of organizations. So it's one measuring what the intent of the grant is with what is the award amount and having to do those awards based off that calculation.

But as we noted, you know, we definitely want to be good partners and see where we can, but we do have to work within our existing resources.

And have you found that with the gardening that tools are used inappropriately? I mean that's one of the things you hear of, why they don't want to offer it.

A person has a hoe or eight. Years, there has never been an incident that the tools are used improperly. And we are on level four prisons. We have clippers, we have shovels, we have rakes. And 100% there has not. There has not been an incident.

Yes sir, If I could just add a Little bit just sort of taking that question, maybe even a little more broadly for folks inside like myself, People coming in and providing these programs are many ways are like considered. They have like an exalted status among us. They come in and provides our way to heal.

And it's highly unlikely that people are going to misuse the tools in a garden program or any other program because other people in the program would be like, no, that's not happening. So it's a people who come in and do this kind of work, it's the work that helps us become better human beings.

And I think people inside fully appreciate how important that is.

That's pretty cool. Where are some of the programming gaps? And maybe to follow up on that, what programs would you like to see added or expanded further? Maybe from your perspective, because they want to provide it. So the question is, where do you see the gaps?

That's an interesting question. I will just take that step back to talk about again how we're trying to be pretty holistic in it and where we really try to make sure there are no gaps. With that foundational piece with the adult basic education, higher education, integrated substance use Disorder, we really think that's the foundational pieces.

And then the community based organizations and the volunteers are really that supplemental piece. And really there's a lot of dynamic motion to it. There's a lot of change in the programming and so we really lean on our partners and the incarcerated population to show us what they have interest in, knowing that we are covering the foundational pieces.

And this is really those supplemental pieces that we are building on top of. So we really, I would say work with our partners to try to identify what in their perspective could be.

So what are the most popular programs and what are the least popular programs that you find?

So I would say, I would. I guess every program is popular with some people. I would say there are some programs that are extremely popular. There are programs and they're probably the programs that deal with insight. Like organizations like Guiding Rage into Power or grip, which is a really powerful long program.

Land Together is another program that really, I think as you have put, you know, just gardening inside and outside. And I think these kind of programs where people are working on how do they become a better human being.

And you know, I often say, I think if there's very poorly named, they call it soft skills, which I think is really not the right word. It should be the most important skills, which is like, you know, empathy, compassion, self awareness, how to work with other human beings.

And I Think those are the programs that have the highest attraction for folks because I think virtually everyone inside that I ever Knew in my 38 years wanted to become a better human being.

That's really interesting.

And I'll just follow up on that really quick. My experience in working with LAND together, like the participants that are in the group love our program. And like, at one facility I can think off the top of my head. We have a 900 person wait list and there's a wait list of at least 100 people on every yard that we're on.

And I think a big piece of the love of our program is that we partner with people through their entire reentry journey as well as inside facilities. And you know, they get to get dirty and they get to work and they get to put their hands in the soil. They get to grow watermelons and eat the watermelons.

And yeah, it's a beautiful program.

When your organization started up, what were some of the challenges to either get a contract or to begin to provide services?

Well, a big portion for us was just working within the facilities and getting the approval to get tools because there was a lot of the pushback of how they might be used. But the experience and the time has shown that that's not going to happen or, you know, it hasn't happened yet.

So I think it's just, you know, trying to create new systems and like getting approval to eat the food was a big step for us. It took us about five years to get that, to allow that to happen. So there's just all these challenges that we don't really realize until we start doing it and start asking.

And once we do and we prove that it works, like, it's amazing. We, we just had a huge farmer's market in one of our facilities, which was incredible. So thank you.

Yes, I think I could add something there And I think Ms. Tanimoto would probably want to say something too.

But I mean, I think over the last 10 years thereabouts, there has been a fairly substantial shift in the idea of the importance of rehabilitative programming and the importance of bringing in practices that seem kind of like when I go, I came to prison in 1980 and like it was basically you were there to be punished and to suffer.

And I was kind of like where I was at. And that lasted for a pretty long time. But I think over the past 10, 12, 15 years, something like that, people have started to incorporate the ideas of how do we bring practices in that can help people heal.

And I think and I think there's a lot of folks like Ms. Tanamoto here and some other people in the Department, I think, are really committed to how do we make this less horrible and more like, you know, people have an opportunity to become better than their worst moments so.

And I really appreciate the acknowledgement. I appreciate the experience. We as a Department, really are working towards normalization. The farmers market, to me, is such a perfect example of what that looks like. We know that's in the community and just that agency to be able to go through and pick your own food, that.

That is, to me, exactly what that normalization is. So as a Department, that's absolutely the direction we are pushing in.

In our next item, this is my last question. In our next issue, we're going to talk about the employment training at CDCR. But many of your programs actually help to develop some of the skills necessary that people can go into employment.

Can you talk a little bit about some of those skills that are developed in your programs that can help someone find and maintain employment upon release?

For our group, we have a very strong kind of green jobs connections in our reentry, and we work closely with a lot of employers who, you know, directly will hire from our program just because our program brings a reputation along as being supportive, you know, and having amazing people.

So, yeah, we have lots of connections on the outside world to kind of the green industry.

Who would you mind sharing? Some of the companies that help in hiring, not help because it actually benefits them, but are open to hiring.

So we have representatives that have come in recently from PG&E with the Arborist programs. And there's different contract groups that work with PG&E, you know, to check trees and that kind of thing. We have a relationship there. I personally have an individual that I worked with at Avenal State Prison that was incarcerated for 15 years.

Once he was released, he started his own solar washing, solar panel washing company. And so he has hired also people from our, that have graduated from our program. Planting justice is another one that we work closely with that has hired people from our program. Yeah, there's a lot of them. There's several of them. That's cool.

Yeah. And I would just add, in addition to Land Together, we have programs like Defy Ventures, which literally teaches people how to be an entrepreneur. We have other programs that just sort of work again on those basic, badly named soft skills that help people. How do you work with people?

How do you develop the kind of ability to talk to people and interact with people in a healthy way and, you know, I mean, I want to also, I think it feels important for me to say, you know, we would like to see far less people in prison and we'd like to see less, you know, less of this altogether.

Don't want to make it like we think this is wonderful. There's lots of prisons. But I do think it's important that we try to work as hard as we can to make the experience of people who are currently in prison less bad. So I think that I just want to make sure I say that on the record.

Point well taken with that. That's going to conclude our issue number three. I might have some follow up questions and I should have said it to the other issues as well some other Members. We may provide additional questions that we need for you to follow back up on with us.

So thank you very much for participating and I look forward to seeing you along the journey. Thank you. With that, we're going to go to the final issue. Issue number four, employment training. We're going to start with Genevieve Cana Delaria. That's going to be my try there.

Superintendent of Correctional Education in the Division of Rehabilitation Programs at CDCR. And next we're going to have Calpea. And we have Michelle Kane, who's the assistant General Manager I met outside, I believe, and Dolores Oliveras, who's with us today.

And then finally we have Angelica Martin, who's the Director of the Workforce and Education for the Anti Recidivism Coalition. So we've got a good amount of you here. Why don't we start with Genevieve?

Hello. Hello. Madam Chair and Members, I'm Genevieve Chandleri. You can come and take one of the seats. I'm Genevieve Chandleri, Superintendent for Correctional Education Division of Rehabilitative Programs at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

I've served as a correctional educator and administrator for almost 20 years and grateful for the experiences and knowledge and mentorship I've acquired to continue serving our instructional leaders and students in this role that I was appointed to at the start of the year.

Thank you to Sydney who provided the you some overall information about OC education opportunities during the previous panel. I would further add all of our adult schools are accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and programs are taught by fully credentialed teachers, faculty and school administrators by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

This includes our CT instructors across five career sectors with 14 trade pathways, building and construction, trades, business and finance, fashion, manufacturing, and transportation.

CTE program selections are made in alignment with Penal Code 2053.5, which requires CDCR to consider high demand sectors, active job markets, livable wage occupations, and the ability to provide technical and occupational knowledge that results in industry certification. Additionally, CDCR policy requires DRP to monitor and evaluate existing CTE programs every five years.

We do this by reviewing labor statistics, EDD data and consulting regularly with many organizations including the California Workforce Development Board, American Job Centers of California, Department of Rehabilitation, and training partners from across job sectors.

Each of the trade pathways result in an industry recognize certification and and are designed to be completed in 10 to 18 months assuming no interruptions. Certifications include National Center Construction and Education Research, NCCR IC3I CAR, National Institute of Automotive Service Excellence, and California State Licensing for Manicuring Cosmetology and Barbering.

All programs utilize an adopted curriculum that is standards based and aligned with state approved frameworks. This design is to encourage the highest achievement of every student by defining the knowledge, concepts and skills that students should acquire at each grade level.

Connecticut is included to further enhance the education system by incorporating knowledge about career options, technology integration of academic content, math, science and literacy with career skills to prepare students for career entry or transition into higher education.

This environment of teaching and learning has led to nearly 4,700 industry certifications in fiscal year 2023 and 24 and according to the 1920 Preliminary Recidivism Report, those with a CTE achievement had a recidivism rate of 26.0 percent versus a rate of 40% for those without a CTE achievement.

CTE evaluates programs offered to balance the unmet needs statewide and has a strong relationship with CALPIA and CDCR's Correctional Construction Mentorship program.

Our working together ensures we avoid duplication of programs, addresses issues like space, provides educational support for those with an unmet need for jobs, those with a medium to high risk and help pipeline some of those students into training programs to obtain work experience.

In addition to CTE, the Occupational Mentor Certification Program provides participants with an opportunity to take alcohol and other drug certification and with our CCHCs, our medical partners, the Peer Support Specialist Program and upon completion individuals can take the Mental Health Services Authority certification that can lead to eligibility for peer navigation.

We also have partnership with California Community Colleges and they have been a welcome part in our institutions with Face to Face College. They are also in our fire camps. They are remote locations so it's not easy to provide that face to face instruction so they do packet based programming.

We currently have four colleges offering classes in 10 of our camps and most recently with the improvement of having Student Internet in one of our camps. We'll be adding college there as well. CDCR also recognizes additional rehabilitative program opportunities that incarcerated persons begin in our gated community and later transition into our larger communities.

The Firefighter training program is in collaboration with CAL FIRE allows our incarcerated folks to earn certifications in wildland firefighting through classroom and training field and field training for those individuals who want to further develop their skills, the Ventura Training center is an 18 month residential program after release designed to provide basic and advanced firefighting training, life skills development, and job readiness support.

They can further add to their certifications with Hazardous Materials Response, Structural Firefighting, equipping them for professional careers in the field. This collaboration is with CAL FIRE, CDCR, California Conservation Corps and the Anti Recidivism Coalition.

Lastly, I want to highlight the community reentry programs for an incarcerated person to serve up to the last two years of their sentence in the community.

In a phased approach, participants are able to continue the rehabilitative work pre employment services, participate in groups, obtain employment and college on campus, allowing the participants to leave incarceration with the job and money in the bank. Thank you for allowing me to share this time with you all.

April marks Second Chance Month, a nationwide effort to recognize the importance of rehabilitation and re entry for justice involved individuals. I encourage you to visit the CDCR website to access individual testimony of our commitment to restoring lives through innovative programming, strong community partnerships, and and belief in power of transformation.

Good Afternoon Chair Richardson and Committee Members. Just thank you for inviting us to share this important information about CALPIA. I'm Michelle Cain, CALPIA's Assistant General Manager of External Affairs.

And I'm Dolores Alaverez, Assistant Chief of Workforce Development. Thank you for having me today.

A little bit about CALPIA, the California Prison Industry Authority. We're a state entity. We have been around for decades. We were formerly California Correctional Industries. We started back in 1947. We became CALPIA in 1983. We are overseen by an 11 Member board.

Many of those board Members are appointed by the Governor, by the Senate, by by the Assembly. The Chair of our Board is the Secretary of CDCR. CALPIA manages job training programs within CDCR and the goods and services provided by CALPIA are sold to government entities, not the private sector.

Our mission is to provide incarcerated individuals of course with life changing career opportunities so that they can become productive, successful contributors and Members of society. As a self funded state entity, CALPIA prioritizes rehabilitation second chances. We are about changing lives and we are about lowering recidivism through our partnerships.

With employers, unions and of course CDCR, we are able to provide those rehabilitative job skills that are so important to individuals who leave our programs with a goal that when a person leaves prison that they never return. That is our goal. We want them to have careers. We want them to provide for themselves.

We want them to provide for their families. CALPEI provides job training programs inside all 31 prisons statewide. We have about 5,800 budgeted positions right now. Participants apply to be part of calpia. They have to apply to be part of our program. All our programs and enterprises have industry accredited certifications attached to them.

So that is very vital for when they go out. They have a certification in hand. Also incarcerated individuals in our programs. All our programs can earn up to 12 weeks of milestone completion credits. Those are the sentence reduction credits. Some of our programs include computer computer coding. We partner with Auto Last Mile.

We have AutoCAD where we partner with Autodesk, Inventor, Revit. We also have a dental lab. We have optical labs where we partner with the American Board of Opticianry where incarcerated individuals can become opticians. We also have a dental program where we partner with the dental technicians through the Productivity Technician Training Corporation.

We have Braille program which we partner with the Library of Congress. We have a commercial dive program, you may have heard about it in Chino where we teach them how to do underwater welding. It's a very successful program. Our healthcare facilities maintenance program is at every prison. Graduates go through a TPC training system.

They learn how to clean at a hospital level. We have many working in the industry when they return home, working at hospitals, dental offices. They start their own cleaning businesses. We have metal fabrication where people learn to weld. In many of our enterprises they also learn how to get that Overton forklift certification.

Where I see incarcerated individuals working at Home Depot, Costco. They have that forklift certification and they can get a job which is vital. We also have a pre apprentice program. Carpentry, construction, labor, iron worker. Our pre apprentice programs. We partner with the trade unions. We also offer apprenticeship programs through the California Department of Industrial Relations.

This is some of the examples include certificates of coffee roaster, data entry clerks, maintenance mechanic and lastly, I want to just briefly highlight our most recent recidivism study. The study was completed by the University of California, Irvine. It shows individuals who participated within CALPIA had fewer rearrest reconvictions and lower rates of return to custody.

The study compared those who participated in our programs to those who were qualified to but did not participate in a CALPIA wait list. We wanted to make sure we were even on an even level field.

By three years after release, only 15% of CALPIA participants had been returned to custody, which means 85% of course who participated in a CALPIA program are not coming back to prison. The UC Irvine study tracked more than 8,600 formerly incarcerated individuals. The results showed that participation in CALPIA is associated with with reduce offending overall.

Now I'm going to turn it over to Dolores and she's going to update you on key updates on the projects we have on the horizon as well as workforce development.

Thank you Michelle. Thank you.

So first I want to start off by touching on a couple of the programs and some of our successes and highlights to date. I first want to lead in with Construction Skills trades, pre apprentice, and specialized training.

The Construction Skilled Trades Career Technical Education Program collaborates with the Northern and Southern Southern California Laborers Unions, the Northern California Carpenters Union and the Union Field Iron Workers Apprenticeship and Training Program. In fiscal year 23, 24, 86 participants enrolled in the program with 14 graduates successfully securing union employment.

Graduates who remain engaged with CALPIA and transition into union careers have their first year of union dues covered and receive a starter set of apprentice tools ensuring that they are fully prepared and job ready to begin their careers immediately. In fiscal year 23, 24 we had 152 participants enrolled in our CTE specialized training programs.

This includes commercial diving, Computer aided design or AutoCAD computer coding through the Code 73 70 program, as Michelle mentioned, and audio video production. Of those we had 127 graduated, achieving an 83% success rate for CALPIA. I'd next like to touch on our state apprenticeships.

CALPIA collaborates with the California Department of Industrial Relations to administer the State Apprenticeship program, providing participants with industry recognized certification and preparing them for meaningful employment. Upon release in fiscal year 23, 24, 2,126 individuals have been a part of the apprenticeship program. Next I'd like to touch on our accredited certifications.

CALPIA invests in high quality curriculum offering 128 nationally recognized certification programs. In fiscal year 23249188 incarcerated individuals participated in a CALPIA accredited program. Next, I want to touch on our Entry to Employment program.

During our previous during our previous appearance before this Subcommitee, we introduced the Entry to Employment Network program which allows eligible CALPIA participants to apply for employment prior to their release. In collaboration with the Employment Development Department and Geographic Solutions, Inc.

Calpia Workforce Development Coordinators support program participants in building resumes and completing job applications through the EDD Caljobs platform. The E2E program has been successfully implemented at 23 institutions with full deployment to all institutions projected to be completed by May 19th of 2025. To date, we've had 283 participants enrolled in the program.

We are seeing great success from this program with applicants getting jobs as soon as they leave prison. One of our first participants in the E2E program was hired by a large manufacturing company right here in Woodland just four days after leaving CSP Solano.

Now I'd like to finish up with some projects on the horizon for CALPIA and we hope we get an opportunity to continue to share some of these ongoing updates with you in the future.

We are grateful to our senior CDCR partners for the opportunity to establish a joint venture partnership in support of the reimagined San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. Through CALPIA's Joint Venture Program, a private business owner has been identified to operate the on site cafe. This will provide additional employment opportunities and job training for our incarcerated individuals.

This collaboration will be instrumental in continuing to advance the goals of the California Model. Next, I want to touch on a major milestone that has been achieved in our commercial dive program. Following successful negotiations, Cal PIA has partnered with the Southwest Carpenters Training Fund and the Pile Drivers Union further enhancing pathways to employment post release.

Through this collaboration, CALPIA Dive Program participants will gain real world on the job training and occupations related to the pile driver, marine and commercial diving industries. It's important to note that CALPIA recognizes the critical importance of providing formal program participants with comprehensive support for a seamless transition as they reenter society.

In line with this commitment, we recently applied for the Pathway Home 6 grant issued by by the U.S. Department of labor to expand re entry programming for eligible incarcerated individuals. This grant would Fund services both prior to release from state correctional facilities and local jails as well as ensuring continued support post release if awarded.

CALPIA plans to enhance its E2E programs at CIM, CIW, FSP and Solano. And last here for a key project on the horizon. As of this month, CALPIA has completed the deployment of its new Enterprise Resource Planning System statewide.

The new ERP enables incarcerated individuals to learn supply chain management using a modern application that is widely adopted across private sector manufacturing companies. By using this industry best practice and the latest technology, CALPIA is able to prepare program participants for successful reentry in their communities and in the workplace.

Chair and Committee Members, this concludes my update and thank you so much for having me today. I'll hand it over to Michelle and really quick.

How can.

CALPI has hundreds of success stories of graduates obtaining amazing careers when they leave prison. And of course, that's what it's all about. CALPI hires formally incarcerated. We have many that serve board Members who serve on our board who are formerly incarcerated. But if the Committee is inclined to hear, we brought formerly incarcerated who is now success story.

Mr. Ennis. He went through job training programs, also CDCR programs. He went through our program at Corcoran. He is now a project manager for a large commercial developer. And he came up here. I'm hoping he can just say a few words if possible, maybe after her presentation or if you have time.

Yes. Come forward and we'll need to be as brief as possible. We're almost at one.

Yes. Yes, ma'am. Come on up, young man.

We'll be respectful of your time.

Hold the microphone to you.

Thank you for this moment of your time. I will keep it brief. My name is Justin Ennis, and as the CHP opened with today, there are people that need to be in prison. And I was one of those people. I deserved every bit of that 16 years to life that I was sentenced to.

I didn't want to be broken, but I just didn't know how to fix it at the time. And these programs that are funded are really grace in action. These programs gave me the opportunity that I needed most when I deserved it the least. PIA was a true practice field for me.

Yes, I was in a food and beverage packaging industry not related seemingly to what I do today. But it actually is because it was there that I learned to just show up to work. The ability to learn that I had it within me to do these things.

But spreadsheets, inventory deadlines and leadership without authority, those are all things that have carried me in my profession today. Along with personal mentorship from, from Doug Asher and Jack Smith, who told me, hey, you can do this and this is how you do it, and if you just persist at this, then this will carry you.

And I got out after never having a job in the real world with a stack of just what my supervisors had said about me from PIA. And that was my foot into the door.

But what's most important is what they taught me there allowed me to climb the ladder and become a six-figure earner in the trades within 18 months of my release. And as she mentioned, now I'm a salaried project manager for a large commercial developer. And that's just in over two years post incarceration.

What's most important about that stuff is they didn't teach me to survive. They taught me to thrive, and that has been what has enabled me to give back.

And now I get to go into the prisons and speak and share about my experience with Pathway to Kinship, which is a self-help group that the earlier panel was talking about as well as with PIA.

And that just really provides hope to those and lets them see that this is a realistic target when they use this opportunity that has been set before them. And I can't reiterate how much that these programs have been instrumental in the transformation of my life and then me giving back and helping to then give back to others.

But I think like all the parties have said today, the most important thing that this does is, is it helps so that there are no more victims. Thank you.

Thank you. Tell me your name again.

Justin Ennis.

Justin, you know, you did the best of all of them. You have very few notes there, let me say, you know, there's, you said you didn't deserve it and some of those kinds. And, you know, I'll just share a few pieces of advice with you.

One, I was on the Long Beach City Council for six years and the city prosecutor said to me as I was moving up and going to come to the Assembly, he said, and excuse my French for people who are here, I don't know, I'll probably get in trouble for saying this, but he said, you know, the higher you go, the more ass you show.

And what he meant was that, you know, a lot of people do a lot of things, just some get caught. And, you know, we're, we're all one step away based upon our background and our experiences, maybe where we grew up, the parents that we had, the classes that we attended.

I literally was on a conversation with someone and they were advocating for students to get in at UCLA and they said, well, you know, if a person hasn't taken the AP classes, they're really not interested, you know, or whatever. And I said, hello. I said I was an athlete.

And people felt because I was an athlete, you know, maybe I was dumb and stupid and just bounced the ball and really, you know, I wouldn't do well in AP classes. And that was farther from the truth. I wasn't even given an opportunity to take the AP classes because I was an athlete.

So, you know, whatever has happened, has happened. But I would encourage you, and I know it's important, a part of your recovery, to share your background and it's really, really eye-opening for us to hear it. But I would also encourage you from a personal perspective, you know, to just keep walking, doing what you're doing.

Most people don't, if they were given those circumstances, could get up and accomplish, you know, what you've done and you've been able to, you know, focus your mind on what can I do going forward. So you're quite a testament.

And if we have people like you who are doing what you're doing, we need to certainly spend more money doing this. So, you know, I'm quite impressed. And I'm a State Senator, so, you know, that's saying something.

I see a lot of people and I hear a lot of jive, but you can tell you sincerely mean what you've said. So I hope you'll continue to participate. I had an opportunity to hear very briefly about the program.

And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to do this hearing was I don't think we talk enough about the people, the real work that's happening. We hear the Department statistics, but we don't talk to real people.

So thank you for coming and I hope you'll keep in touch and I'll certainly want to work with you going forward to help educate Members that sometimes what they see initially is not the end point of where we're going. Fair enough?

Yes.

Yeah, you're doing a good job. No, stay where you are. You're good. You earned that spot. Okay, now we're going to close out with Ms. Martin.

I'll keep it brief. Good afternoon, Chair Members of the Committee. My name is Angelica Martin. I'm the Director of Workforce and Education at the Anti Recidivism Coalition, also known as ARC. Our mission is to end incarceration, mass incarceration. I've worked in workforce development for over 20 years and five of those have been in reentry services with ARC.

And while working there, I've supported over 500 formerly incarcerated individuals with training services. And nearly half of those have gone into building trade union careers. We believe careers in the construction trades allow for individuals to gain higher wages, comprehensive benefits and safer work environment. This has been in partnership with the building trades.

We've seen great success in placing individuals in the building trades careers, but it has come with some challenges. Before I jump into that, I do want to mention that part of our program, we do provide stipends for individuals. We believe that investing in their time is something that we just, we model.

So we have three training programs, one in Los Angeles, one in San Bernardino and one in Sacramento, where we teach the fundamentals of construction. And individuals receive the certified certificate that's approved through the, through NAPTU and it is the multicore curriculum, which is also known as MC3.

And so anyone who goes through that training can use that certification to go anywhere in the country to connect with a building trades union and find employment. But like I mentioned, we believe that individuals need to be invested. They're investing their time, so we invest in them.

And so a lot of our programs have enabled us to be able to pay individuals to do that.

But going back to what I mentioned about challenges, some of the challenges we're facing since the inception of the program, which started in 2016, is there's been delays or individuals have gotten deterred from employment and something as simple as them having their right to work documents, driver's license, IDs, Social Security.

It's difficult for us to be able to place individuals without those documents also because there's all the red tape for receiving state dollars, federal dollars, there's requirements that they provide these documents so it can delay the process of them getting into these employment opportunities. Also, we've seen housing issues.

If a person doesn't have state stable housing, it can be a snowball effect.

You know, if they don't have a place to lay their heads, then they're in their cars, then they get towed and it just, it just becomes a problem that we're starting to see more and more, especially with the high cost of rent and the high cost of living.

Some other issues would be like supervisors, supervision requirements, having to check in with parole and probation. At times they want to come to the actual job site, they want to meet with their employers.

Sometimes their requirements are causing them not to show up to work because they have, they're being mandated to report on site or their agent has to come to the house where they're at, which, which then conflicts with them to show up on time.

And one thing we need to remember that employers are not used to, many of them are not used to these requirements. They're used to your traditional employee where they show up to 8 to 5, they're there Monday through Friday not having to deal with these requirements.

So those are some things that we've faced also a simulation back into what is called the free world. So what we've seen is relationship problems could be issues at times having individuals that have been gone for quite some time and wanting to reconnect with family that they've been gone from.

So understanding how mental health and wellness is a huge factor to look at and provide services to individuals so that they can reconnect with their families, they can reconnect with themselves, who they are, because who they are inside and who they are now is different, and it can be challenging for them.

And just also creating supportive communities for individuals when they do come home, figuring out ways to do that.

So just my last point is by reinvesting in community organizations like ARC that specialize in reentry services and provide training programs like the Apprenticeship Readiness Program, which helps individuals go into the building trades, as well as the Ventura Training Program that assists individuals in getting into firefighting careers.

Helps individuals come back and we create strong and thriving workforce. You know, one of the things that now ARC is starting to do, we understand the importance of climate change and the effects it has on underserved communities.

So we're now starting to launch an electric vehicle training, technician training, so that we can help transform the communities in which these individuals are coming from. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. I saw the sergeant moving. I thought they're coming to get me because I used a bad word. Even we get in trouble. Just a few quick questions, and I'm going to do them briefly because people have been waiting and we've got to get people back in different assignments.

Just a very few quick questions. How many CTE programs are typically available at a given institution?

They could range anywhere from three to nine.

Okay, so several at every one. Okay. And what are the typical wait lists for those programs?

We have an I can give you an unmet need of 7,000 approximately that require employability.

Okay. And how many Cal PIA enterprises are typically available at the Institute? Everyone.

Right, Everyone. The healthcare facilities maintenance program is available at every one. And that's our biggest program right now. And we're seeing great success with that. That's where we're seeing. We have formerly incarcerated, actually working at Kaiser, working at Scripps Hospital down south, owning their own cleaning businesses. It's not just a janitorial program.

They have to clean at a hospital level. So that program offers a lot of opportunity. We're seeing great success with that program. We also have, like Dolores was saying, our career technical education programs are very popular.

Okay, and am I correct in remembering that Cal PIA you don't receive any government funding?

Yeah, no state funding. No state funding. So the how it works is we sell goods and services to the State of California or government entities. The money goes back into the programs. Computer coding program alone cost almost 10,000 a year. I should say 10,000 per student. Also, we have Overton forklift certifications. Those certifications cost money.

So within that, all the money goes back into the programs.

Well, who says it can't be done? Right?

He somehow figured it out.

Exactly. Well, I want to thank all. Excuse me, I'm fighting a cold. I want to thank all of you for participating today. We will have some, I'm sure, subsequent questions that are going to come your way. We do have the May revise which. Which is the Governor's Budget that's going to come out.

That's where we'll know what the funding is in existing programs, and that's where we'll know if funding is stabilized or if we need to advocate and fight for additional funding in certain areas. So I'll be on my GLB. That's why we're doing this today.

And I just want to thank you for coming and I look forward to working with you over time. And Justin, I look forward to seeing you again. All right. Okay. Thank you. Now we're going to have. If you have any materials, you can give them to the sergeant.

And we're going to open it up for the public to speak for a maximum of 1 minute. Please share your name and an organization if you're with one, and what you're advocating on behalf of. Yes, ma'am.

Ready now. Yes, ma'am. All right. Hi, I am Dr. Jenny Espinoza and I am speaking with respect to the Right Grant 3.0. I am a former former CDCR chief physician and surgeon and before that was a primary care provider at San Quentin for many years.

And now I am Executive Director of a CBO that runs inside prisons that's co led with incarcerated individuals that focuses on childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences. So I could speak to this on a couple of different levels and I'll. I'll be brief. So one is as a.

It's only one minute and you've got quite a few people behind you. You will have the opportunity to submit additional information in writing. But I do want to be courteous for you waiting. So please do summarize.

So, yeah, I was going to say, number one, I got to see firsthand the impact of prison programming within my own patient population. Number two, as someone who co founded a new CBO, the Right grant was a game changer for us to build out and sustain our program.

We are about to expand to a new site, waiting to see if The Right Grant 3.0 is going to get funded to be able to do that. And we have formerly incarcerated participants who have paroled that we could employ to do this. So please consider resuming funding. And thank you very much, much appreciated.

Yes.

Natasha Minskir Smart Justice California in strong support of the Right Grant. Thank you.

Danica Rodarmel on behalf of the GRIP Training Institute in strong support of the Wright Grant. Also just want to thank you for the humanity that you're bringing to this Subcommittee and the work of you and your staff on putting together this really important informational hearing. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning. Janice O'Malley with AFSCME California. Appreciate the conversation today. Wanted to highlight just a couple things about to expand what our Members From UAPD in 2620 had mentioned about contracting out. We worked with Assemblymember Lowenthal last year to get a JLAC audit to look at the issues of contracting out.

We worked with also in Collaboration with Local 1000 and the site techs as well. So we expect to be able to share that with you probably next year. Also I wanted to flag when our Members talked about the working capital conditions inside these prisons.

The Administration has yet to sit down with AFSCME California and with our affected affiliates on indoor heat standards.

On the indoor heat standards. So hopefully we can work closely together with the Committee to get the Administration to sit down with the affected employees in the facilities. So thank you.

On what?

Definitely. Thank you very much.

Norhan Abolail with Transformative Programming Works, Thank you Senator for your support of the Right Grant. This funding ensures that people in prison have access to community led rehabilitative programs that help them turn their lives around, reenter society successfully and not go back into prisons.

It's a much needed investment for California and while it might be a difficult budget year, we can't afford to not fund these programs. They don't only benefit people inside, they lead to safer communities, reduce recidivism rates and they enhance or reduce state spending as well. So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hi, my name is Izzy Lomaster and I want to thank you for your. Time and truly listening to everyone here and I strongly urge you to support the Wright Grant.

Thank you very much.

My name is Ruth Salady. I'm here in support of the Right Grant. I'm previously incarcerated and a survivor of severe child abuse and I help people in prison learn about the effects of childhood trauma and start their self healing journeys.

It's amazing to work with people and see their transformation, giving back to their communities, reconnecting with family and really helping the community inside. So I thank you for this time today.

And take the same comments that I gave to Justin. I thank you for your frankness. It's a real eye opener to all of us. But also know you've done your time and you're on your way and keep going. And we're quite proud of your progress. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. My name is Clinton Drummer. I'm representing Financial Liberation Training Academy in strong support of the Right Grant. I myself being formally incarcerated, these programs have helped me to become the person that I am today.

And being home five years, I've come home and founded Financial Liberation Training Academy which I go back inside of Avenal State Prison every week to help them reduce financially related triggers that's relating to their reentry process. And so just seeing the power of help providing this information is changing so many lives.

And we, we pray that you guys support the Right Grant to expand this information. Thank you.

Yes. And my same comments that I shared with the other two people. Thank you for your progress that you're making and hang in there and keep doing it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Leonard Rubio. I'm the Executive Director of the Insight Prison Project. We are one of four founding organization of Transformative programming works. I am also formerly incarcerated. I started off with some of Insight Prison Project's programs. I'm now the Executive Director. I've been home 15 years.

We are here asking you to support the Right Grant. We're currently offering our victim Offender education group in seven prisons here in California. We're in the process of expanding to five more. The funding of the original Right Grant allowed us to stay sustainable, but we would like to be able to expand our programming.

This programming truly works and I ask that you please support it. I do. Didn't expect to do this, but I also ask you to support the funding for employment opportunities. Had I actually stayed in the job I had been in before becoming the Executive Director, I'd be making about $140,000 a year right now.

While I was inside, I was able to complete an apprenticeship program as a machinist and was able to get hired on by East Bay Mud and was working for them. But I chose to leave that job and come to this because the importance of saving people's lives through their hearts and preparing people to come home.

Because 95% of people inside are coming home. Who do we want them to be our neighbors. I want them to come home healed and I want them to come home and be able to start healing others. Thank you for your time and thank you.

And the comments I made earlier apply as well. And I would just encourage you that you know, it's not all about money. Take it from us here. Most of the people who work for me make more money than I do. So, you know, sometimes we're just doing the right thing.

Exactly.

Thank you, sir.

Good afternoon. My name is Anthony Nichols. I'm a Program Director for Financial Liberation Training Academy, formerly incarcerated. I'm a beneficiary of the TPW and the RIGHT program. And I just, I go back up into prisons teaching life skills and just being an example that these, these skills do work. And so I just want to thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you for coming and thank you for your progress. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Senator. Good to see you again. Chris Larson, policy manager in the Sacramento Office of the Anti Recidivism Coalition. Formerly incarcerated myself, although my incarceration time was on the East Coast and in county jails, not state prisons. But I am very blessed and fortunate and honored to be working today with ARC. Also.

First, in addition, I would like to say thank you for holding this hearing today. It's always impactful for me as someone who works with folks who are formerly incarcerated from state prisons every single day. That's what I do every single day.

And almost the number one thing that comes up with folks who come into our office are what my colleague Angelica talked about today, which is the workforce development. It is so important. There are some things that folks need surrounding workforce development. Like, as Angelica said, the housing is key and critical.

I wanted to also thank you and also say that we are in full support of the Right Grant as well. But please continue to support workforce development with and through organizations like ARC. It is key and critical to the success that I know you want, I know that we want as a state.

So thank you and see you again soon.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon Chair. Espon Nunez, on behalf of the Anti Recidivism Coalition and Healing Dialogue in Action in support of the Right Grant. Also just want to thank you for the emphasis around the programming and workforce stuff.

If I could, I would say I would like to see more investment in victim offender dialogues, just because for me, that was one of the programs that really enlightened me and showed me the ripple effects of the impacts of my actions, not just on my victims, but. My own community and my family at large. So thank you.

Well, thank you and thank you for your progress. You're doing good. Keep it up.

I'm Emily Wonder, representing Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition regarding CDCR working conditions. While the culture of CDCR institutions remains punitive, dehumanizing, and frankly violent, tensions within these facilities will remain high and the mental and physical health of staff will continue to suffer.

This violence also shows up between staff members and serves as the backdrop to daily life for the people imprisoned inside. CDCR is responsible for fostering a safe and healthy environment that values cooperation and trauma informed care.

Creating this environment requires that CDCR finally prioritize the normalization at the heart of the California model, which is often cited by CDCR leadership but is not actually reflected in their practices or in daily life within state prisons.

Formerly incarcerated experts and community organizations are ready and willing to collaborate with CDCR on solutions and many, including Sister warriors, have already made recommendations for doing so. Funding in the state budget would allow community organizations to devote resources and time to this work.

We too are concerned for the health of staff, but please remember that people are living in these conditions while also experiencing experiencing abuse from staff on a daily basis. Thank you.

Thank you for your time and your testimony. Well, thank you all of you who hung in there with us today. This has been very informative and helpful and my commitment is we're going to take the information back and use it to do the best that we possibly can.

Having heard from all the Members of the public, I don't see any other questions or comments before us. So with that, I want to again thank you to all the individuals who participated in public testimony today.

If you were not able to testify today or there's additional information you wanted to provide, please submit your comments or suggestions in writing to the Budget and Fiscal Review Committee or visit our website. Your comments and suggestions are important to us and we want to include your testimony in the official hearing records.

Thank you everyone for your participation. For our sergeants, our staff, everyone who's looking out to make sure that this can go through today, we appreciate all of your work. We've now concluded the agenda for today's hearing. The Senate Budget Subcommittee Number five on Corrections and Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor and Transportation is now adjourned. Thank you.