In 2020, more than 11,000 Californians came home from prison. Many of these individuals, largely nonviolent offenders, had experienced overcrowding and unmanageable COVID outbreaks. Their releases were part of the state’s attempt to address pandemic surges in prisons. As a result, by the fall of 2020, California’s prison population had reached a 30-year-low.
This wave of releases also meant that the state’s reentry programs were immediately overwhelmed. People struggled to access transportation, housing, and food services. Once settled, many of those who’d been incarcerated for lengthy periods of time realized they had returned to a job market that looked completely unfamiliar.
That’s how it was for Oakland resident Adam Garcia, who came home in November 2019 after serving nearly 20 years of a 20-to-life sentence. The last time he had applied for jobs, LinkedIn and Indeed didn’t exist.
Garcia told The Oaklandside about some of the challenges he faced while he was applying for jobs. While he acknowledges that he can’t say for sure whether he experienced employment discrimination, he did say he recognized a pattern whenever he’d reach the end of an interview process.
“I went through so many different final interviews and I noticed that, on face level, everything was going good,” said Garcia. “And then I noticed when it came time for the background check, tones and demeanors started to change and that I was given this vagueness and almost this complete shift in attitude and...
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