How this California program is making it easier for those leaving prison to earn degrees

FRESNO, Calif. — When Arnold Trevino was released from Solano State Prison – one of several California prisons in which he was incarcerated over a 25-year period for second-degree murder – he returned home with an associate’s degree in liberal arts.

It was an achievement he narrowly completed. The college program that allowed him to earn the associate’s degree was cut a year after his graduation, as part of reforms pushed through the federal crime bill of 1994 signed by then-President Bill Clinton, which among other things took away Pell Grants for incarcerated people to pay for college programs. Some of Trevino’s friends, he says, never completed their college work as a result. But he had a chance to taste the feeling of being college educated — and he enjoyed it.

“I got out of prison before I got out of prison,” Trevino told the NewsHour. “After I became educated, I know I never spent another day in prison.”

Trevino today is an outreach coordinator at California State University at Fresno for the Project Rebound, which supports formerly incarcerated individuals at 15 campuses in the CSU, the nation’s largest four-year public university system.

In California, the formerly incarcerated are a growing population on college campuses, and university support programs are crucial to guiding those who are released from facilities like state prisons and would like to enter university. Inside a small hallway at Fresno State, Trevino looks on to a wall that is plastered with photos of him and other students once in prison – but now earning university degrees. The program started at Fresno State with only six students, and this fall will have up to 60, according to Trevino. He said 21 students earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees this past May. Since the program expanded across campuses in 2016, nearly 500 university degrees have been awarded to formerly incarcerated students throughout the state.

College opportunities have not always been available to those in prison, and the avenues into higher education after release can be complicated by the fact they have a record of incarceration, among other barriers, like lack of financial support and housing and are often unprepared to reenter society.

But education can help significantly reduce the likelihood that someone will re-enter the prison system. Nationwide, the odds of re-entering prison are 48 percent lower for those who enter post-secondary education programs, according to analysis from the RAND corporation.

Across California, those who are released from prison have a roughly 46 percent chance of returning to prison within three years, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Since 2016, students enrolled in Project Rebound have had a recidivism rate of less than one percent, according to a report by the Project Rebound Consortium, which advocates for the program’s funding.

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In 2015, the state began offering associate degree programs at only a handful of state prisons, and they are now available at 33 of the 34 prisons across the state. And bachelor-level programs have slowly been added to facilities, who work with nearby universities to establish the courses. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says about 10,000 inmates are in college.

For those who then are released, Project Rebound offers an educational opportunity that mixes the shared experiences of prison life with the possibilities that come with academic success. Created in 1967 by a professor at San Francisco State University, the program offers additional support and a pathway to more advanced degrees if former inmates decide to continue their educational path.

Staff at Fresno State’s program say along with coursework itself, they also encourage formerly incarcerated students to get involved in campus activities, in part to remove the stigma of reentering society.

“It’s just a matter of encouraging people that are struggling with reinventing themselves to continue to be a student,” Jennifer Leahy, a program coordinator for Project Rebound at Fresno State, who once was serving a life sentence in prison, said. “We want our students involved in sororities and fraternities and groups and clubs because it increases their chances of graduation.”

Project Rebound’s staffing as well as offices are aided by funding that comes from the state legislature as well as individual campuses. Renewed funding from the state means more campuses could soon host the program, said Trevino, who also visits part-time with those incarcerated at Avenal State Prison in western Fresno County as part of his work.

Trevino said the impact of having formerly incarcerated people graduate from university with the help of programs like Project Rebound produces positive ripple effects that can influence others in the community and leave lasting positive change. He said if it wasn’t for education, his own future after prison would’ve been uncertain.

Creating opportunities beyond incarceration

Arnold Trevino holds a photo of himself in prison and another during his graduation from California State University at Fresno. Trevino is an outreach coordinator for the Project Rebound program at Fresno State, which helps guide formerly incarcerated students through college. Photo by Cresencio Rodriguez-Delgado/PBS NewsHour

Trevino realized during his time in prison that he didn’t just want to get out — he wanted to return home with goals and productive plans for his life.

Before he went to prison, Trevino’s friends had learned one sure thing about him: if he was drunk, there would be a fight. His first knife fight had been at age 16, when he was stabbed in the chest by a 30-year-old man on Thanksgiving, ruining the family’s holiday, he said. When Trevino was 21, the late-night parties continued, and so did the fights.

On the night before his arrest in 1986, things got out of hand. Trevino’s fight with a man at the party had gotten to a point where “I couldn’t take him down,” he said. With Trevino finally wanting to quit, the other man continued beating him in front of others, he said.

“It got to the point of humiliation,” Trevino recalled.

Angry and still drunk, Trevino said he left but later returned, only to still find the man at the party. The two exchanged words before the fight continued. Trevino ran to his car and grabbed a knife, and later stabbed the man, he said. Trevino remembers seeing nothing but red, and feeling blinded by his anger. The next two decades would be spent in prison.

Trevino has told the story of what unfolded all those years ago in the community of Porterville, on the eastern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, multiple times to multiple audiences, including those serving time in prison. It’s his way of sharing the truth of his past, and how he built a different future through education.

Nearly 7 million people are on probation, in parole, or serving time in jail or prison in at any given time across the United States, according to federal statistics. And each year, more than half a million are released from state and federal prisons and back into their respective communities.

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The task for Project Rebound staff, which includes program directors and outreach coordinators, is to ensure there are opportunities for those returning home, and resources to help them stay out of prison.

Educational and criminal justice reforms are helping change the resources and support available to the formerly incarcerated in California.

Most recently, California approved SB 416, a bill which ensures college programs in prisons are provided by institutions such as community colleges or state universities with transferable credits, making it easier to enter university. Legislators also removed questions that inquired about a person’s criminal history in the admissions process. Congress also in 2019 reformed financial aid laws, granting inmates the ability to once again access Pell Grants – financial aid offered to students with “exceptional” financial need and who haven’t earned college degree – for college courses as soon as July 2023.

A 2019 report from the California State Auditor recommended state prisons take a closer look at programs offered to inmates, specifically those aimed at preventing recidivism.

The shifting attitude on incarceration, along with attempts by previous state administrations to reduce the prison population — through sentencing reform and programs such as those that move inmates from prisons to jails under a process called “realignment” — has most recently led to a move to close at least three prison facilities by 2025; one has already closed and another is scheduled to close by the end of the year.

‘Maybe I’m not as bad as I thought’

From left: Danielle Hatch, Victoria Rocha, Veronica Aguilar and Travis Durbin. The four Fresno area residents are current and past members of the Project Rebound program at Fresno State. Photo by Cresencio Rodriguez-Delgado/PBS NewsHour

For some, taking part in education programs inside prison is one way to slowly introduce higher education as a possibility.

While in the prison system, Trevino also helped start new programs like a braille course and he helped set up cultural awareness events and staged performances where inmates acted out roles that taught about the importance of education. In an earlier instance, he earned his high school diploma in prison and was allowed to invite his parents to attend the ceremony.

“For the first time in years, I saw my parents smile,” Trevino said. “They had a reason to smile. I was being productive instead of destructive, and that made me feel good.”

Today, with two associate’s degrees, along with a bachelor’s and master’s degree, Trevino credits his focus on education inside prison for putting him on a path where he could mentor others through Project Rebound. He was among the first students to explore starting the program at Fresno State as part of an internship, and only after he had inquired about ways he could attend the university.

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For those in the program, like Victoria Rocha, school was at times the very thing she ran away from as a teenager. She moved between cities in the San Joaquin Valley and wasn’t motivated to attend school out of a lack of interest. Instead, she said, she preferred to hang out in the street with her friends. But after experiencing the criminal system first-hand, Rocha said she got tired of the cycle of being in and out of trouble.

Rocha, now 38, recently graduated from Fresno City College and Fresno State, and plans to pursue a master’s degree in addition to helping her own children also pursue college after high school.

Growing up, “I didn’t feel like anything was expected of me,” Rocha said. “I felt like my parents were going through their own things. And basically, you figure out your own way and whatever way that was. And education was not one of them. It was not important to me.”

Rocha and three other current and former students at Fresno State who spoke with the NewsHour about their experience with Project Rebound said higher education provided three key concepts they say were missing from their lives: stability, support and an open mind about the world.

As more opportunities open for formerly incarcerated people, university representatives and the students say the knowledge of being in prison and coming out is valuable to those who are in the same situation and later get out, too.

Students told the NewsHour they arrive at college with past trauma and afraid of sharing about their past over fears they could jeopardize their education. But Leahy, the program director, said Project Rebound is a safe space for the formerly incarcerated at Fresno State where they can be themselves and help each other through problems.

“You can have a crisis or the most beautiful thing in the world happen to you and you look around and the world is full of strangers,” Leahy said. “It’s very isolating when you come home [from prison].”

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Trevino, the program’s outreach coordinator, also says telling each other’s story is a way to combat the “naysayers” who don’t believe former inmates can change. In the program, most students don’t even ask each other what their crimes were. Here, Leahy said, it’s irrelevant.

She said student support on campus can go a long way in a region of the state afflicted by inequity. In one estimate, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said about 80 percent of people newly-released from prison from 2015 to 2016 returned to just 12 counties in California, five of them in the Central Valley. In the San Joaquin Valley region alone, there are roughly eight state prisons and just three state universities between Merced and Bakersfield.

Leahy said it’s not always exactly possible to make up for past crimes and those who were victimized, but it is possible to improve individual actions and be a positive influence in the community. She said the Project Rebound program provides that opportunity.

For Travis Durbin, who was offered a job as a program director for a substance-abuse program at Corcoran State Prison following his graduation from Fresno State, being part of Project Rebound gave him the confidence he needed to complete his education, and he wanted to return to the prison setting to use his own experiences to help others purse positive paths in and out of prison.

After a conviction, he was afraid all he’d be able to do was menial work for low wages. But now, he said, he serves as an example even for his children that they can achieve their goals and get good jobs with benefits and even vacations.

He said education has helped him and his former classmates think differently about life – it has given them real proof that they can change.

“When you get that first ‘A,’ for those of us who feel pretty bad about ourselves, sometimes for the first time in our life, that’s a moment of like, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not as bad as I thought,’” Durbin said. “Then you get another success, and another success and another success.”