Graduation season is in full swing, but high school and university students are not the only ones celebrating new beginnings — 20 Monterey County probationers are, too.
On Wednesday, 18 men and two women clad in formal attire reminisced about their troubled pasts and lauded Monterey County’s Day Reporting Center counselors, probation staff and parole officers for helping them leave that strife behind.
Matthew Swall, a 31-year-old veteran whose life changed last year after abusing drugs and making a rash of bad decisions, was among those honored at the “transition ceremony” in Salinas.
“It all happened in three months, just three,” he said, sounding almost shocked.
Swall said he tried rehab, but that did not work. So he enrolled with the county’s reporting center, a key part of the county’s contribution to California’s prisoner realignment effort, which has shifted responsibility for thousands of low-level felons to local jails and probation departments.
The reason why the intensive treatment program works, Swall says, is because it focuses on the individual.
“It’s about you. It really changes your way of thinking,” he said. “At first I wasn’t happy about coming there, I came in with the attitude of fake it till you make it.”
Swall said the center became a blessing. Gerry Dudek, a county probation services manager, said people can turn their life around with the proper guidance.
“You are not born a crook,” Dudek said. “A lot of these folks did not have good role models, and we want to change that behavior.”
The center is operated by the firm BI Inc., which is owned by GEO Group, one of the nation’s largest private corrections companies. When probationers start out, they come to the Pajaro Street center seven days a week, take an alcohol breath test daily and are subject to random drug testing. They take part in individual therapy, group sessions and life-skills training. When enrolled in the program, they are required to stay sober for 90 days.
The program serves as an alternative to jail time, in part to help reduce the jail population.
Part of the counseling required from “clients” is to write out their thoughts and issues, and read them to a class.
“Once you write it and read it out loud, it sounds just as ridiculous as it was,” Swall said.
In order to graduate from the program, probationers also need to find a job or enroll in school.
“We have a pretty good success rate for them finding a job,” Dudek said, adding that about 70 percent of probationers in the program get employed.
Dudek also praised the low recidivism rate. From the 175 graduates in the past six years, 43 have committed a crime or violated probation, he said.
“That is not bad,” Dudek said. “That is not bad.”
Statewide, nearly 70 percent of inmates released from jail are back behind bars within three years.
Swall is already working. He landed a job a month ago doing mechanical maintenance for a private military company. He left Salinas to cleanse his social life and moved to San Jose, where he hopes to enroll in school and maybe open up a business in the near future.
If he graduates from college, he said it will be “a better feeling” than graduating from the county’s program.
“I’m proud of it, but not proud of it,” he said. “It’s a part of me that I’m proud to leave behind.”
