Homeboy Industries Probation

LA County Board of Supes to Consider Funding Homeboy Industries to Do the Job It’s Been Doing for Free for the County for Years – UPDATED


UPDATE: On Tuesday, the LA County Board of Supervisors
passed the motion described below, with four of the board members voting yes. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas abstained.


On Tuesday the board of supervisors will vote on an unusual motion, which proposes offer a yearlong, $1.5 million contract to Homeboy Industries to do the work that they’ve been doing anyway for the county, which is helping formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women in LA County by giving them the tools and support to allow them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community—instead of cycling in and out of jail or prison or both.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the details of what Homeboy does, you can find it here.)

The motion is co sponsored by Supervisor Don Knabe, and Supervisor Hilda Solis. You can find the text here, but it amounts to this:

LA County Probation is sitting on an absurd pile of unused state money that is mandated to be used on programs that do exactly what Homeboy provides.

Here’s the deal.

As we’ve reported in the past, LA County receives a yearly bunch of cash from California’s SB 678 fund, which is a performance-based program that shares with California’s counties some of the money saved by the state through AB 109 prison realignment. The counties are, in turn, supposed to spend their SB 678 dollars on “evidence-based” programs to help adult probationers restart their lives and to avoid future visits to jail or prison, thus saving the state and county additional money.

LA County probation began receiving SB 678 funds in FY 2011-2012. But, while they took the money, they did almost nothing at all with it. Thus by May 2015, a county audit discovered that department had amassed an astonishing $140.5 million in SB 678 funds—which former probation chief, Jerry Powers and company reportedly failed to mention to the board of supervisors or anyone else. Meanwhile, instead of spending the funds on much-needed programs, either of probation’s own creation or on existing community-based programs, they simply sat on the cash, which—according to our sources—has now grown to $145 million or more.

Now, as AB 109/prison realignment moves into its 5th year of operation, and Prop. 47 moves is one and 1/3 years old, it’s in everyone’s best interest that the county takes some of those SB 678 bucks that its been stuffing under the mattress, and use it on evidence-based programs aimed at the people for which it was intended—programs like Homeboy Industries provides to hundreds of men and women every year.

(By the way, did I mention that the $140 plus million has been languishing all this time in a non-interest bearing account? Who in the world was overseeing these decisions? Oh, yeah, right. Never mind.)

Which brings us back to the motion pertaining to Homeboy.

According to Nick Ippolito, Assistant Chief of Staff for Supervisor Knabe, the motion accomplishes a couple of things. First of all it would allow the county to start funding a program, and then over time, multiple programs, that work with the population that the county is most interested in working with—namely former and current offenders released from jail or prison who, if they can be prevented from recidivating, while save the county and the state a bunch of money, and will contribute greatly to the cause of public safety..

With this in mind, “we’ve been trying to form a strategic relationship with Homeboy for some time,” Ippolito said. “I don’t know of any other organization that works with their documented level of success with individuals who have been hardcore gang members.” But, he said, “Homeboy industries clients aren’t sent to them by a judge or a probation officer, they come in on their own, when they’re ready.”

There are plenty of organizations “who work well with non-violent AB 109-ers,” Ippolito continued, “but not with this population. And we want to figure out the best service model to help this population. But we want to do that without trying to turn Homeboy into a fee-for-service agency,” which are the kind of programs that probation generally contracts with, Ippolito said. “But that’s not how Homeboy turns lives around.”

Yet, despite the fact that Homeboy has been helping the men and women that the county most wants to reach, the county has rarely given the organization even the smallest about of funding.

“Homeboy has done their work almost exclusively through private donations, and through their enterprises like their bakery” said Ippolito, not government money. “So how do we support them without screwing up their model?”

Enter Tuesday’s motion—which, if it passes, would allow the board to take a small portion of that hoarded 678 money and enter into an agreement with Homeboy for 12 months, a contract that would establish a pilot that will allow the county, according to Ippolito, to figure out how to work with Homeboy and other “innovative organizations whose work the county should be funding,” but whose model doesn’t fit into the county’s neat little funding boxes.

Or, as the motion says, Homeboy offers “a service template that doesn’t fit neatly into the traditional, referral-based models the County is accustomed to administering.”

According to both Ippolito and Supervisor Knabe, the sort of “sole source” funding the motion proposes, where a contract is offered to one program specifically, with no competitive bidding, is also not usually the kind of thing the supervisors the county does. But, this situation warrants it, they say.

And in the next round, according to the motion, after a year of the pilot program with Homeboy, the county would open the opportunity, through a conventional competative bidding process, to other programs that, like Homeboy, utilize “the elements of research based, best practice models to address behavior change in previously incarcerated men, women and high-risk youth seeking reentry services.”

Sounds like a good idea to us.

We’ll let you know what happens.


JUVENILE SOLITARY

We will also be closely tracking the vote on another very important motion proposed by Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis to “end juvenile solitary confinement in LA County.” More on that after we see how the vote goes. (It is expected to pass.)


EDITOR’S NOTE: In the interest of transparency, I need to disclose, for those who don’t already know, that I have a strong bias in the direction of Homeboy Industries, mainly because I wrote a book about Father Greg Boyle, Homeboy’s founder, and have been reporting on him, and the organization that he built, and the homeboys and homegirls who’ve come in and out of Homeboy, since 1990.

But this also means, I’ve had a front row seat to watch hundreds of people manage, with Fr. Greg’s and Homeboy’s help, to reroute the trajectory of their lives against staggering odds. In a bunch of cases, I’ve tracked those same people over time—which means sometimes, I’ve seen them backslide, occasionally tragically. But most of the time, the stutter-step back was just a normal part of the complicated and very human task of making one’s way into a transformed and hopeful future. To put it another way, in more than a quarter century of observing Homeboy Industries, I’ve gotten to witness a whole lot of real, no-kidding miracles.

So, yes, speaking personally, I really hope this motion passes.

7 Comments

  • Homeboy….. Enter into a deal with government and those 5 Kings (Idiots) (politicians) and everything you built will be ruined. Stay the course and don’t let some “promise” of money with no strings ruin what you’ve built.

  • Gee, a bunch of ex (?) gang members getting shoveled over a hundred million dollars of tax payer money, what could possibly go wrong? Well,that money was just sitting there, what else could you do with it? Not like you could give it back to the tax payers or anything, that’s just ridiculous.

  • Celeste:

    WIth Probation Department being such a mess, have you heard any rumors of them being under the Sheriff’s Department? I remember hearing this rumor a couple of years ago, but nothing came of it.

    I mean, Probation doesn’t have a Department Head, don’t know how to use $140 million plus toward rehabilitation programs (which is their MISSION), and now the Board is dictating how they should run the Halls. To me, they are a huge mess and need help.

  • EDITOR’S NOTE:

    Dear “Concerned,’ no there are definitely no plans to consider putting probation under the sheriff’s department, nor was that ever on the table in the past, to my knowledge.

    The idea of splitting probation into two agencies, one for juveniles, one for adults is being seriously explored, however.

    Right now probation has a strong interim chief in Cal Remington, and although he’s got a lot on his plate, he’s well liked, experienced, and capable. The board is engaged in a national search to find a new chief.

    The appalling problem with the money being hoarded occurred under the previous chief.

    C.

  • It’s a deal with the Devil. Greedy politicians trying to get their grimy hands on the purse strings, nothing more.

  • This will go over like the now defunct “No Guns” program. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/18/local/me-noguns18

    It’s great to have faith in humanity, but these gangsters are heathens. Celeste, I’m sure you wouldn’t them living next door to you. It’s all fun till you’re in the middle of their nonsense. It’s a fact that Homeboy Industries has hidden wanted gang members from the law and has facilitated their locations for gang related business.

  • After more than 25 years of Homeboy Industries operating with no financial assistance from the city or county of Los Angeles, it would be nice to for the organization to finally have some much-needed
    help.

    Upon completing 18 months of participation in the program, the majority of young men and women “graduate”/ leave the program and begin jobs in a variety of fields: including, solar panel installation,
    iron work, office clerical, food service, etc., etc. Also, in the last few years, a growing number of homeboys and homegirls have gone on to continue their education at local Community and State
    colleges. This last year’s number was 50! One young man recently completed a “semester abroad”
    program at Oxford University!

    These young people are definitely worthy of assistance from the City to where they will continue to live and contribute to in future years!

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