The Last Mile (prison rehabilitation program)

Turn 2 U Inc. dba The Last Mile (TLM) is an Oakland, CA based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide opportunities for personal and professional growth for justice-impacted individuals through education and technology training. ^[1] The Last Mile is celebrating more than a decade as an organization, originating with its first program in San Quentin State Prison with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. TLM has leveraged the power of public-private partnerships with Department of corrections and industry-leading companies to build and expand its programs. Programs are currently operating in 16 facilities across 7 states in the United States, including California, Indiana, Oklahoma, Michigan, North Dakota, Montana and Massachusetts. ^[2] TLM has been able to expand its purpose, "To Imagine, Build, and Open Doors," into other facilities through these partnerships as well as funding and employment opportunities from the technology sector. Through in-prison education, transitional support, and workforce reentry, TLM is disrupting the system of mass incarceration across the United States. In-classroom curricula and course material prepare students for meaningful employment in modern job roles including web development, software engineering, and audio and video production. Students cultivate personal and professional development in alignment with the technical education and with the support of TLM reentry staff, volunteers, and a community founded on shared lived experience. ^[3]

History

After visiting a business class at San Quentin State Prison, Chris Redlitz and Beverly Parenti created The Last Mile. The program was founded to address the high rates of unemployment amongst the formerly incarcerated population after they are released, by empowering justice-impacted people with the skills needed to succeed in today's job market. ^[4]

Entrepreneurship

The Last Mile was initially modeled as a pro bono startup accelerator inside San Quentin, designed with prison security protocols and restrictions in mind. With mentorship from Redlitz and Parenti, each participant conceptualized a business, developed a business plan, and prepared a business pitch. In May 2012, the inaugural TLM Demo Day was held at San Quentin State Prison with six graduates pitching their startup ideas in front of 350+ business and tech C-suite executives, entrepreneurs, government officials, and new organization.

The Last Mile was initially modeled as a pro bono startup accelerator inside San Quentin with restrictions imposed to meet prison security protocols. With mentorship from Redlitz and Parenti, each participant conceptualized a business, developed a business plan, and prepared a business pitch. In May 2012, the inaugural TLM Demo Day was held at San Quentin State Prison ^[5] with six program graduates pitching their startup ideas in front of 350+ business and tech C-Suite executives, entrepreneurs, government officials, and news organizations.

Web Development

In 2014, The Last Mile launched its coding program, the first fully inclusive computer programming curriculum available in a US prison, in partnership with the California Prison Industry Authority. ^[6] TLM’s Web Development Program (also known in California as the Code.7370 Coding Program) was implemented at San Quentin State Prison as a career training program with the goal of teaching students to become software engineers, improving their opportunities for gainful employment when they returned home. The program has since expanded to 7 states and 16 facilities, serving justice-impacted populations in men's, women's and youth facilities. ^{[7] [8]}

AVP

The Last Mile launched its first classroom of the Audio and Video Production Program (AVP) in Indiana at Putnamville Correctional Facility September 13th, 2021.

The AVP Program was designed in-house by audio program specialists, who used video content and practice files donated by LinkedIn Learning as a basis for instruction. The program's coursework from LinkedIn Learning focuses on the fundamentals of sound and audio engineering, with the intention that students gain software proficiency to become audio engineers or producers. Sirius XM partnered with TLM to help develop the curriculum and provide sound engineering content. Avid Technology also sponsored TLM to participate in the Avid Learning Collective, which provides the program with curricular content, audio and video creation software and certifications. This formative collaboration works in service of students to build the necessary skills to enter the field of audio engineering as apprentices or interns post-release. The AVP program expanded to San Quentin State Prison on April 18, 2022, making it the second classroom at TLM to teach Audio and Video Production. ^[9]

Expansion

After launching at San Quentin State Prison, The Last Mile continued expanding among California’s correctional facilities for men, women, and youth throughout California. In 2018, The Last Mile launched its Web Development Program in Indiana facilities and has since continued to expand to other states, as outlined in the table below. ^[10] The Last Mile focuses on implementing its programs at the state level with a combination of public and private funding.

Locations

Current Facilities	State	Year Launched	Year Closes	Serving
San Quentin State Prison	CA	2010	-	Men
Ironwood State Prison	CA	2015	-	Men
Folsom Women's Facility	CA	2017	2023	Women
Pelican Bay State Prison	CA	2018	-	Men
Ventura Youth Correctional Facility	CA	2018	2023	Young Adult
California Institute For Women	CA	2018	-	Women
Indiana Women’s Prison	IN	2018	-	Women
Pendleton Correctional Facility	IN	2018	2021	Young Adult
O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility	CA	2019	2022	Young Adult
Topeka Correctional Facility	KS	2019	2021	Women
Mabel Bassett Correctional Center	OK	2019	-	Women
Putnamville Correctional Facility	IN	2019	-	Men
Rockville Correctional Facility	IN	2019	-	Women
Plainfield Correctional Facility	IN	2019	-	Men
Parnall Correctional Facility	MI	2019	-	Men
North Dakota State Penitenentiary	ND	2020	-	Men
Montana State Prison	MT	2022	-	Men
Massachusetts Correction Facility- Shirley	MA	2022	-	Men

^[11]

Programs

TLM utilizes a custom-built remote instruction software and Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver educational programming into correctional facilities across the country. The organization’s staff creates and delivers course content with coordination support from classroom facilitators, who oversee students’ daily activity in person.

Structure

Platform as a service

• TLM's Engineering Department has developed an entire platform as a service (PaaS), including machine/user management, a secure network stack, and home-grown applications and curricular tooling, which are all designed to deliver a consistent and state-of-the-art student experience at scale.
• Our cloud-based infrastructure supports a robust and ever-growing software suite, which provides students with industry-best-in-class tools such as VS Code, GitLab, MongoDB, DevDocs, and more. All stack deployments and identity management are centrally controlled, giving TLM the flexibility to custom-build and deploy new tools and software all within the same secure environment. Our curriculum is developed in-house and released biannually. ^[12]

List of platforms available to PPs

• Canvas LMS: Learning management system.
• CND Service: Simulated Content Delivery Network (CDN), providing content for various frontend libraries and resources.
• DevDocs (Mirror): Offline documentation browser.
• GitLab: Open source code repository platform.
• Lightbox: Image repository for student projects.
• Messaging: Classroom-Chat platform.
• Palette Color Picker: Color scheme generator.
• Regex Test Tool: A tool to learn, build, and test Regular Expression
• Rest Endpoint: Simulated REST API endpoint.
• Stack Overflow (Mirror): Offline browser of Stack Overflow
• SQRank: JavaScript challenges of varying difficulty.
• Storage: Cloud-based secured storage for students.
• Support: Centralized remote support platform for students.
• Surveys: Centralized survey platform used to measure student feedback.
• Typing Trainer: Offline Touch Typing Trainer
• Wikipedia (Mirror): Encyclopedia platform.

Curriculum

In-Prison Education

• Web Development Program: a 12 month coding program in which students learn full stack software engineering using a platform that simulates the internet. The course curriculum includes web development fundamentals such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and Bootstrap as well as MERN, a software stack that four open-source technologies: MongoDB, Express.js, React, and Node.js.
• AVP: TLM’s Audio and Video Production (AVP) Program currently consists of one 6 month course that provides an overview of several audio production careers and covers the fundamentals of sound and hearing, recording equipment, and signal flow. After several weeks of training on the use of the three main types of signal processors, students put their skills and knowledge to the test in the creation of six full-scale music mixing and spoken word production. Students use Avid Pro Tools, the industry-standard software for editing and mixing digital audio.
• Remote Instruction: The goal of Remote Instruction (RI) is to provide an interpersonal connection between students and TLM, and to apply real-world examples to what students are learning. Remote Instructors host weekly live sessions on technical concepts that are introduced through the learning management system, supplementing the curriculum by providing tangible applications for abstract concepts and with in-the-moment examples and exercises.
• Self-directed learning: Students engage with required readings, video tutorials, activities, and project-based assignments via TLM's learning management system. Course content is grouped into weekly modules and thematic units, and is updated on a biannual bases to ensure alignment with recent trends in relevant professional sectors.
• Academic Support: The goal of Academic Support (AS) is to strengthen the students' understanding of the content in each course by connecting what they are learning to real-world examples and resources. The Academic Support team supports students' learning by providing them with reliable and consistent point of contact for technical requests, providing additional resources, answering any questions they may have regarding the curriculum, giving them individualized feedback, and grading all major projects for students across all the classroom.

Impact

Fair-Chance Hiring

The Last Mile is regarded by advocates of both prison reform and workplace diversity, as the program's results have proven to reduce recidivism and mobilize nontraditional career pathways. After decades of incarceration, alumni have been hired by Slack, GoodRx, Zoom, Dropbox, ^[13] Adobe, ^[14] the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), ^[15] VMware, Fandom, and Checkr, ^[16] among other companies, after becoming qualified full stack developers through TLM's in-prison program.

Media coverage

The program has been covered in Reuters, ^[17] The Atlantic , ^[18] BBC News, ^[19] ReadWriteWeb, ^[20] TechCrunch , ^[21] and other newspapers and magazines. ^[22]

The program was also discussed by Neil Cavuto in his TV show for the Fox Business Network. ^[23]

References

1. "Home". The Last Mile. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
2. "Locations". The Last Mile. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
3. "Our Impact". The Last Mile. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
4. "About TLM". The Last Mile. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
5. Shontell, Alyson. "There Is Now A Startup Demo Day For Prison Inmates". Business Insider. Retrieved 2021-01-11.
6. Farivar, Cyrus (2014-11-14). "How 18 inmates at California's notorious San Quentin prison learn to code". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2021-01-11.
7. "About TLM". The Last Mile. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
8. "Programs". The Last Mile. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
9. "Programs". The Last Mile. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
10. Skrzycki, Symone (2019-12-19). "Tech Talk: Embracing the Last Mile". Indiana Chamber of Commerce. Retrieved 2021-01-11.
11. "Locations". The Last Mile. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
12. "Programs". The Last Mile. Retrieved 2024-01-16.
13. Hughes, Owen (October 6, 2020). "From prison to programming: How coding can help inmates find a path out of crime". TechRepublic. Retrieved 2021-01-11.
14. Madrigal, Alexis C. (2018-08-29). "Big Tech's Newest Experiment in Criminal-Justice Reform". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-01-11.
15. "After a 14-Year Bid in San Quentin, He Is Now Coding Apps for Mark Zuckerberg's Foundation". Black Enterprise. 2018-02-22. Retrieved 2021-01-11.
16. Crockett, Zachary (2019-10-19). "How one man went from a life prison sentence to a $100k+ engineering job". The Hustle. Retrieved 2021-01-11.
17. Shih, Gerry (February 25, 2013). "Inmates go high-tech as startup mania hits San Quentin". Reuters . Retrieved March 26, 2014.
18. Madrigal, Alexis (March 20, 2012). "Bringing San Quentin to Social Media". The Atlantic . Retrieved March 26, 2014.
19. Walters, Alexander (June 7, 2012). "San Quentin's Silicon Valley: From inmate to entrepreneur". BBC News. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
20. Devaney, Tim; Stein, Tom (July 16, 2012). "From Inmates to Entrepreneurs: The San Quentin Startup Accelerator. Prison inmates have all day, every day, to sit around and think. It could be the world's largest pool of untapped brain time. Chris Redlitz decided to put it to productive use. He founded the Last Mile startup accelerator program at San Quentin State Prison in California". ReadWriteWeb . Retrieved March 26, 2014.
21. Constine, Josh (February 22, 2013). "San Quentin Prison Demo Day Gives Entrepreneurs Behind Bars A Second Chance". TechCrunch . Retrieved March 26, 2014.
22. "News". The Last Mile. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
23. "Turning Prisoners into Entrepreneurs". Fox Business Network. March 6, 2013. Retrieved March 26, 2014.

External links

• Official website