CA set to cut Freedom Project, aimed at reducing mass incarceration 

On Tuesday afternoon, in a bright restaurant facing Aquatic Cove, a group of women in their 60s listened to each other, engrossed. 

“I was afraid to start a stove — I hadn’t done it in so long,” said Sally Johnson. “I thought I was gonna blow the house up!”

“I hadn’t walked up stairs in 32 years,” said Belinda Anderson, nodding so her long, purple braids shook. “When I started walking up them, I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, I’m out of breath!’” They laughed. 

For 32 years, Anderson, a Bayview native, was serving a life sentence without parole in Chowchilla, a women’s prison in the Central Valley that is entirely ground-level. Johnson, a transgender woman, got out of prison this past November after serving almost 40 years. The two were at a luncheon with around 25 other San Franciscans who had committed crimes in their youth and went on to serve decades behind bars.

Both were released in 2022, thanks to the Freedom Project, a program established in 2020 by the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office that reexamines the cases of prisoners booked in the county. If certain criteria are met, attorneys will recommend a reduction in someone’s sentence, returning the case to the courts.

As of today, 88 people have been able to return home since the Freedom Project launched. There are around 500 people to go, said Danielle Harris, the project’s managing attorney. 

But now, their futures are in limbo: For the second year in a row, Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget axes the Public Defense Pilot Program, the three-year state grant funding the Freedom Project. 

Counties around the state welcomed this grant as a godsend. Notably, it’s the first of its kind for the state’s public defenders, many of whom have far lower budgets than their counterparts in the district attorney’s office.

Statewide, the Freedom Project is a slim .014 percent of the state’s budget, which is one reason Harris and her team are holding out hope that a last-minute outpouring of support could protect the Public Defense Pilot Program before the June 15 deadline.

This morning, California’s legislature returned their budget revision to the governor, which includes preserving, at least in part, some of the program’s funding. Newsom will now review it and either accept or reject their changes June 15. 

‘A stellar record of recidivism’

Harris estimates that San Francisco’s program has helped prevent over 1,000 years of incarceration. 

“We have a stellar record of recidivism,” said Harris. The rate is zero — likely because most of the participants are senior citizens. A majority of people in California prisons are over 50 years old.

“There’s really good science today that a kid who commits a crime, even a serious crime, will age out. Particularly if they’re given rehabilitative options and programming.”

Indeed, proposed cuts come despite proof that programs like the Freedom Project reduce recidivism and, ultimately, save California money: it’s estimated that the state spends $15,000 a year on each person in prison. Plus, the project funds social workers who “help people plan for their release and help them into the community,” said Harris, improving the odds of reintegration. 

In 2004, while she was at Chowchilla, Belinda Anderson’s son was killed in Hunters Point. In 2006, her mother, the rock of her family, died. When she got out at 60, Anderson was afraid there would be no community left. But her Freedom Project social worker was able to help her through every step. 

“I call the public defender my olive branch,” she said. “They cannot be cut. People need them.”

For Anderson, now 62, the program’s reentry assistance meant a chance to start fresh after decades of trauma and challenging circumstances. After getting pregnant with her son at 17, Anderson started working full-time to support herself. Her own mother had been a postal worker and single mom of five. 

“By the time I came home from school, she was going to work,” Anderson remembered. “But she was the greatest. She was pushing me to the right, but I went to the left.”

Anderson got addicted to drugs in her 20s. One night, she said, “I went out to get some money. I decided to rob a cab driver, and it led to murder.” She was 28, and had a 7-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son.

“It’s a domino effect,” she explained. “I didn’t just hurt his family; I hurt mine too.” Her social worker, Amanda Perez, was with her every step of the way after getting out, and helped her find immediate employment at Five Keys, a nonprofit that connects people coming out of prison or rehabilitation with social services. 

When Anderson failed her driver’s test, she called Perez. “‘Well, did you study?’” Anderson remembered Perez asking. “‘No, I thought I knew it!’ ‘Belinda, you have to study.’” Perez spent time catching her up on all the new DMV rules, and the next round, Anderson passed.

But, if the budget cuts go through, Perez’s position will likely be eliminated.

Budget cuts aside, resentencing in peril

Budget woes or no, repercussions of the city’s political turmoil have already set back work the Freedom Project could have accomplished. 

Part of the state’s funding goes not to the public defender’s offices, but to district attorneys: Their offices are meant to unearth and recommend cases for resentencing through their post-conviction review unit. 

In 2020, when the Freedom Project was introduced, then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin sent out a slew of letters to people in prisons, including to several of those at Tuesday’s luncheon.

“There were a lot of letters recommending people for resentencing,” said Angela Chan, an attorney with the public defender. Boudin’s recall in 2022 cut all of that work short. 

Since Brooke Jenkins became district attorney later that year, priorities shifted to cracking down on drug crimes and retail theft. According to Harris, only two people have been recommended by the DA for the program since the recall in July 2022. 

Under Boudin, 51 received recommendations between 2020 and July 2022. Of those, 47 were released successfully. The other four were resentenced and are still serving time.

Many who received initial letters from Boudin’s office haven’t heard anything more. This is a contrast to others around the state: Even in more conservative counties, dozens more resentencing recommendations have come out from their district attorneys. 

Randy Quezada, a spokesperson for Jenkins’ office, said that applications for resentencing are “rigorously evaluated.” 

“When appropriate, our office seeks to resentence individuals who meet the eligibility criteria,” he wrote in an email.    

Harris from the Freedom Project sees this as a problem: “Our DA’s office is using the resentencing money, but not recommending anyone get resentenced.” If state funding for the Freedom Project disappears, she and her team will have to advocate for a larger portion of the city’s shrinking budget to continue their work.

Those who have already benefited from the program know that it will encourage others to follow in their footsteps. It also clears up space for people on the waitlist for rehabilitative programs in prisons. 

Tammy Cooper Garvin, who spent 28 years at Chowchilla, recalled the day she got a letter commuting her sentence, at the same time as Anderson got hers. “I was in my pajamas. I’ll never forget it. I started jumping up and down, crying. We sang church music.”

Garvin now also works for Five Keys. She goes to work, hangs out with friends, and provides support for others coming home who need IDs, social security cards and anything else. It’s another domino effect: A friend of Garvin’s, still behind bars at Chowchilla, told her recently, “If you could get out, I know I can.”