![\"Stephanie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/OCR-L-REENTRY-0927-04-PB.jpg\")
Stephanie Vanessa Rodriguez, a mentor for Peer Leader for Underground Scholars, works in the group\u2019s office at UC Irvine. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register\/SCNG)<\/p>\nThe version of Orange County that greeted Hector Cervantes when he got out of prison in 2012 was less forgiving than it is today, at least when it comes to the treatment of people who were, and are, formerly incarcerated.<\/p>\n
These days, the county\u2019s biggest universities offer programs to help people make the transition from prisoner to student. And local nonprofits train the formerly incarcerated in job skills and, when they can, they help them find work. And sometime in late 2027 or early 2028, Orange County \u2013 once a county where the local jail released inmates in the dead of night, often without a ride \u2013 will open Common Good, a publicly funded center that will offer everything from temporary housing to jobs.<\/p>\n
But all that is what\u2019s on tap today, or tomorrow. In 2012, life for former inmates was tougher.<\/p>\n
For example, jobs and job training for Cervantes and the 35,789 other men and women who got out of prisons or jails\u00a0in California that year were available but limited. Los Angeles County had (and has) Homeboy Industries, which offered jobs and training to former gang members and former prison inmates, but there was nothing similar in Orange County.<\/p>\n
Housing, too, was tricky, in part because landlords still could legally screen out people who had been incarcerated. Cervantes rented a room from his sister when he got out, but he would have had to scramble if he had to find a different place.<\/p>\n
And school \u2026<\/p>\n
Stephanie Vanessa Rodriguez, a mentor for Peer Leader for Underground Scholars, works in the group\u2019s office at UC Irvine. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register\/SCNG)<\/p>\n
\u201cWasn\u2019t easy,\u201d said Cervantes, who is co-founder and director of UC Irvine\u2019s Underground Scholars<\/a> program, an 8-year-old effort that offers guidance and support to about 100 formerly incarcerated people who attend the university.<\/p>\n \u201cAnything could have derailed me.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet nothing did.<\/p>\n Cervantes, who turned 23 in 2012, initially earned an associate\u2019s degree from Santa Ana College, working all the while. Then, after missing a deadline to apply to Cal State Fullerton, he wound up at UCI, where he earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in history and a master\u2019s degree in public planning. These days, even though his job is at UCI, he\u2019s studying for his doctorate in education at UCLA.<\/p>\n \u201cI love school,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Vibe shift<\/p>\n Cervantes had help.<\/p>\n A former girlfriend inspired him to get back into school. A mentor he met in community college nudged him to stick with it.<\/p>\n But in 2012, and for some years after, the Santa Ana native \u2013 who said he spent most of his life between ages 13 and 23 either incarcerated or on probation \u2013 didn\u2019t have access to the kind of support that he could find, from organizations and from the law, if he got out of prison today.<\/p>\n State and federal efforts aimed at helping the formerly incarcerated get jobs (such as the Reentry Employment Opportunities program), or housing (HOME American Rescue Plan), weren\u2019t yet in effect.<\/p>\n Also, in 2012, \u201cban the box\u201d laws had yet to be widely implemented, meaning it was still legal for employers to disqualify a prospective employee simply because they\u2019d disclosed a criminal record on a job application form. Today, so-called \u201cbusiness necessity\u201d rules often apply, meaning applicants for most private and public-sector jobs are legally required to be given a chance to explain the circumstances of why they wound up behind bars, and how they have or haven\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n And, critically, the public mood, at least locally, seemed to be darker when it came to recently incarcerated people.<\/p>\n National polling conducted in 2012 by Pew Research<\/a>, among others, found that a bipartisan majority of Americans believed government was spending too much money on prisons and putting too many people behind bars.<\/p>\n But strong anecdotal evidence from that period suggests Orange County wasn\u2019t yet part of the trend.<\/p>\n The local district attorney of that era, Tony Rackauckas, routinely won re-election by telling voters how tough he was on criminals. Local defense attorneys pushed, whenever possible, for cases to be tried in front of Los Angeles-area juries, while prosecutors angled for cases to be tried in Orange County, where juries were viewed as more inclined to convict.<\/p>\n Though the country was just beginning to downshift from peak incarceration \u2013 in 2008, roughly 1 in 100 American adults was in prison or jail \u2013 Cervantes said that when he first got out of prison, even talking about a criminal background was tough.<\/p>\n \u201cYou just learned not to bring it up, or to let it be brought up.\u201d<\/p>\n What many people perhaps didn\u2019t realize at the time is that a flood of formerly incarcerated men and women were about to get out of prison.<\/p>\n So-called \u201crealignment\u201d laws, including AB 109, which passed in 2012 and was aimed at reducing overcrowding in California prisons, were leading to changes within the prison and jail systems. Those changes also meant reduced sentences, including early exits, for a growing number of non-violent offenders. Lately, the state\u2019s prison and jail population has shrunk slightly, yet about 37,000 people a year \u2013 more than were exiting from a bigger pool of prisoners a decade ago \u2013 have been getting out of prisons and jails in California.<\/p>\n That\u2019s helped to fuel the state\u2019s housing crisis. It\u2019s also boosted the ranks of people needing jobs and housing and school.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also meant fewer people in custody, more parents raising their children and more potential in the form of business start-ups, scholarship and art, among other things.<\/p>\n This ongoing march of people exiting prison has come at a time when many Americans with no criminal history have begun to question the legitimacy of some convictions. It\u2019s also come when at least some argue that the national push against drug use and abuse \u2013 the so-called War on Drugs of the 1980s and \u201990s \u2013 put people into prison for crimes that many others committed, with impunity, in their living rooms.<\/p>\n The upshot has been, if nothing else, a change in branding for the formerly incarcerated. Throw away the key? The public is more inclined to view training and other forms of assistance, not life-long punishment, as a more practical path for people who used to be inmates.<\/p>\n The data on whether or not this attitude has paid off is still ugly, but it\u2019s improving. Today, about 30% of people who get out of prison wind up behind bars within three years. In 2012, it was closer to 50%.<\/p>\n The path for former inmates \u201cis different now,\u201d Cervantes said. \u201cNot great, but not what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Meghan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/OCR-L-SECONDS-0823-JG-01.jpg\")
Meghan Medlin, CEO and founder of HIRE \u2013 A Hub for Reentry & Employment in Orange County \u2013 at their office in Orange, CA, on Tuesday, August 18, 2026. The nonprofit employment agency for people with criminal records will move in to a new, county-financed retraining center in 2028. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register\/SCNG)
\nMore than money?<\/p>\n