Program for Ex-Cons Faces Cutoff of Funds

Ten days out of prison, wearing jeans and sport shirt, Ronald Carey wasn’t the run-of-the-mill supplicant before a Board of Supervisors more accustomed to hearing from lawyers in three-piece suits.

But Carey’s clothes were better than the ones he had worn when he left prison. He had a place to stay. He had a lead on a job and bus tickets to get there.

The clothes, job tip, shelter and transportation came from Chicano Pintos Inc., a Garden Grove storefront sandwiched between a Vietnamese restaurant and a pool hall, which helps ex-offenders.

Representatives of Chicano Pintos appeared before the Board of Supervisors last week asking for $100,000 of the $5.2 million the state gives the county to help juveniles and adults considered likely to get in trouble with the law.

Carey told supervisors that Chicano Pintos runs “the only program like this that I know of. I feel without this program that it would really be a detriment because it really does help the ex-offender a whole lot.”

The supervisors are scheduled to decide Tuesday on the disbursement of money for the fiscal year starting in July. But Chicano Pintos faces problems.

There is fierce competition from other groups for money left over after county agencies get the biggest part of the pie. And both Chicano Pintos and others say it is handicapped by a small staff unskilled in the art of shuffling mountains of paper work.

Nearly 80%--just under $4 million--of the state money goes to the county Probation Department, public defender’s office and district attorney’s office. The agencies use the funds to counsel minors, provide lawyers to prosecute them and defend them, and supervise them when they return home, among other things.

Ten other programs, run by seven private organizations, qualified to scramble for the remaining $1.15 million. An advisory board that makes recommendations to the supervisors has said that all the programs, county and private, should receive less than they requested because of limited funds.

Panel Urges No Funds

Chicano Pintos, which was founded in the early 1970s and works with all races of ex-offenders, received $50,000 this year. The advisory board recommended that it receive nothing next year.

That board suggested instead that Turning Point Family Services Inc. receive $52,000 for a youth gang program.

Another problem is a county report last month that said that Chicano Pintos had difficulty getting ex-offender referrals from the Probation and Sheriff’s departments.

Chicano Pintos “has been instructed to work with the Sheriff’s Department, which has had difficulty establishing a positive relationship,” the advisory board said. “With limited funds available, (the board) feels funding the youth gang program would be a better investment.”

The county Probation Department also argues that its own programs are better than Chicano Pintos’. But Supervisor Roger Stanton said that department sends its “most difficult cases” to Chicano Pintos. The “burden should be on the county, too,” to cooperate, he said.

Objectivity Questioned

In addition, Stanton said, the fact that the advisory board consists of representatives from county departments and agencies that receive the money “prevents it from being objective. I think the objectivity of that committee . . . is far from pure.”

Although agency representatives abstain from voting on their own applications, some aides to supervisors said there is an assumption that if one person votes for another’s program, the favor will be returned.

But, Stanton said, “what other group works with ex-offenders?”

Jon Downey, an ex-offender, said: “This is the only one in Orange County that deals with ex-offenders. A lot of the other agencies will refer you here. Without (Chicano Pintos) a lot of people would be back in jail. Me, for instance.”

Downey, 28, said that when he left the prison at Norco in 1983, Chicano Pintos put him up for three weeks at a YMCA and gave him a lead that resulted in a job. After some “personal problems” escalated into two assault and battery convictions, he served a year in San Quentin.

Released in March, he again turned to Chicano Pintos.

Arranged Job Interview

“They gave me bus tickets to get here and sent me to job interviews,” Downey said. “What if they hadn’t done that? I probably would have done another job, a robbery, when I got out. I need money.”

Freddie Staton, 38, was released Feb. 8 from the state prison at Tracy with $200 “gate money.” He went to Chicano Pintos for help.

“The principal thing they provide for me is transportation,” Staton said. “Without a car you can’t get around.”

In the Chicano Pintos offices, Geary Juanmijo was working with Downey and Staton and intermittently explaining how he helps ex-convicts fill out job applications, get driver licenses and improve their vocabulary enough to at least see a potential boss.

“You can’t have someone calling up and saying, ‘Hey man, you gonna give me a job or not?’ He should say, ‘I’m calling to inquire about the job you have advertised in the newspaper,’ ” Juanmijo said.

More than half the 122 people the group counseled last year had been sent to prison for felonies, said Baltazar Perez, president of Chicano Pintos. The rest were convicted of misdemeanor crimes or violating probations.

‘Clean Him Up’

“The individuals we get are individuals with more than average problems,” Perez said. They serve more time in prison, have less education and fewer job skills than people using other programs in the county, he said.

When county officials send him an ex-convict, “they want me to clean him up, dress him up and put this guy into a job,” he said.

That’s fair enough, Perez said, but the county now wants to know his success rate with each ex-offender after a year, not just the current 90 days. Although he has increased his staff to six, the extra paper work will be daunting, Perez said.

Perez told the supervisors that 90% of the people assisted by Chicano Pintos last year found jobs, and that 60% of those held on to them. County officials, however, said they were unsure the figures are correct.

Last year, Perez said, the group’s total budget was $141,000, all of it state, county and federal money.

Perez has succeeded in past years in convincing the supervisors to override the recommendations of their advisory board and give his group more money than was recommended. But this year the competition is strong.

Overcrowding Order

The advisory board recommended that $250,000 go to Orange County Halfway House Inc., which operates houses in Buena Park and Anaheim for offenders released early from the overcrowded Orange County Jail. Halfway House Inc. sought to double that figure.

The supervisors and the sheriff are under court order to reduce overcrowding in the jail and to build new facilities to house prisoners.

Because the supervisors last March said jail overcrowding “is the most urgent problem facing this county,” the county administrative office recommended funding both halfway houses. But it did not say where the extra $250,000 would come from.