April 23, 2020 — In the last few days, we’ve heard a lot about a recently released inmate who came to Ukiah and tested positive for COVID-19 after being exposed to the virus in the state prison in Chino. KQED reported that another inmate, who was also exposed in Chino, died in a halfway house in Compton on April 11. And the Lake County News reported Tuesday that its sixth case was also a recently released inmate from Chino.
Mendocino County Chief Probation officer Izan Locatelli appeared live on KZYX earlier this week and spoke about the pre-release plans of the man who traveled to Ukiah. “If he had followed his release instructions, he would have been homeless in a heavily populated area,” specifically, Modesto, the largest city in Stanislaus County. Modesto is about 350 miles north of Chino, which is in San Bernardino County.
But adjusting to life after lock-up is a major culture shock, even for former inmates who haven’t been exposed to a highly infectious disease with no known pharmaceutical treatment.
Chris Garcia was released from the Mendocino County jail, which is still virus-free, by a judge on March 25th. He was at Building Bridges, the homeless shelter and resource center in Ukiah, on April 7th.
Garcia says he and his kids’ mom don’t always see eye to eye, “so I’ve just been kind of couch-surfing with my friends,” he said. “I’m trying my best not to be living on the street or sleep on the street.” He’s trying to stay safe from the virus. But right now, a big part of that is not going to work, which Ashley Elliott says is key to getting on track to a productive, legal lifestyle. She has a few degrees in the subject, and she’s been in jail.
Elliot has been clean and sober for eleven years now, but she started taking drugs when she was twelve years old. That’s when she started getting in and out of Juvenile Hall, and then the Mendocino County Jail. She was released for the last time on December 19, 2008, during the most recent major economic downturn. She finished her GED, which she started while she was locked up, and then got an associate degree in administration of justice at Mendocino College. From there, she transferred to Sonoma State and got a BA in criminology and criminal justice, where she wrote a report on re-entry.
But at first, without skills, and without drugs, everything was really hard. “I had to sit on my hands some of the time. It was the hardest thing ever,” she recalls. “I didn’t know how to live life without the use of drugs...I had never had a legal job before in my life, so I didn’t even know how to work...it was hard to even take a shower without drugs. I didn’t know how to fill out an application...I remember just feeling worthless and scared and not knowing how to live life. At all. Period.”
Now she sits on a panel at the PACT, or Parole And Community Team meetings at the jail, where she and the other members try to come up with programs to help parolees reintegrate into the community. Former inmates get vouchers for ID, and a worker helps them connect with social services, food stamps, and MediCal. But Eilliott’s plea is for a major shift in attitude, which she thinks will lead to jobs and, ultimately, less reliance on social services. “It seems like society puts an us versus them dilemma between them,” she said; “like they base their goodness off of an inmate’s badness, almost. So if we help them integrate back into society, give them jobs...as long as they’re paying taxes and working, then they’re helping our economic and social systems instead of depleting them by being incarcerated.”
But just recovering from the trauma of being in jail is a lot of work in itself. Chris Garcia recited a poem he wrote about the child abuse he suffered, and the emotional and physical pain of being locked up: “Now the seconds turn to minutes then hours to days, weeks to months then years to a complete maze...the system wants me dead but I’d rather try, ‘cause I’m heading towards death and I don’t wanna die.”