A SECOND chance

written

MARTIN SEVCIK

From the moment I met him, I could tell why so many people are impressed by Edin Madrid.

The third-year sociology student casually leaned back in his seat. He spoke with his whole body – his shoulders swiveled, and his head bobbed side to side when he answered questions. But it didn’t feel like he was nervous. He spoke confidently and never second-guessed himself. For over an hour, I listened intently to his story, told with unexpected enthusiasm and sincerity.

Madrid told me he was part of a tightknit group of friends as a teenager. More than most, he felt as though his identity was intertwined with the people around him. As if to prove how much his friends meant to him, Madrid suddenly pulled back his shorts and showed me a black tattoo about the size of a baseball on his thigh. Thin strands of ink swirled around a name in ornate, delicate lettering.

“Right here on my leg, I’ve got my homeboy,” Madrid said. “He died when he was 16 years old. He got shot multiple times.”

Madrid grew up in Los Angeles’ gang culture. Before he even graduated high school, he was charged with six counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 14 years in prison. But now, he’s poised to graduate from the nation’s top public university in just a few years.

Formerly incarcerated students face an abundance of challenges in higher education, said Valeria Garcia, Bruin Underground Scholars program director. Besides the stigma surrounding incarceration, Garcia noted that these students often face employment barriers, inadequate mental health resources and housing insecurity. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, 29% of the general population has completed a college degree, but only 4% of formerly incareated people have done the same as of 2008.

And yet, Madrid has persevered. In order to understand how he arrived at UCLA, we had to start our conversation with his childhood.

Madrid’s family immigrated to the United States from the Guatemalan highlands when he was just 7 years old. The family settled in the MacArthur Park area, a heavily policed neighborhood in downtown LA.

LA did not treat Madrid well. Police officers kicked down his family’s front door twice in cases of mistaken identity. Constant state supervision, coupled with his immigrant status, made Madrid feel as though his innocence had been stolen. He spent his youth searching for an identity to latch onto and quickly realized he was not the only one feeling this way.

“I gravitated to the kids that had the same problems I did,” Madrid said. “And then we eventually just got sucked into the gang culture in LA.”

Madrid earned his first citation in seventh grade when he stole a CD player from a classmate. His formal involvement with gangs began with tagging, in which he marked his gang’s territory using graffiti. Before long, Madrid turned his attention from soccer and art to drugs and weapons.

I asked him if he ever saw himself pursuing higher education as a kid. He immediately responded with an assertive “No.” To Madrid, high school was not a pathway to college. It was a war zone where rival gang members walked the halls, and he had to watch his back at all times.

“I correlated education with gangs,” Madrid said. “That’s not a place I want to be. That’s not an environment I want to be around. So I ditched.”

Before long, Madrid began engaging in turf wars and gang violence. He saw himself as part of a brotherhood of young men willing to die for each other. But this loyalty ultimately became his undoing.

At age 16, Madrid was charged with six counts of attempted murder. After a guilty verdict, he entered the carceral system, just like so many friends before him.

But Madrid got lucky.

“I got sentenced to 14 years, opposed to a lot of my friends who got sentenced to life sentences,”

Madrid said. “I got that second chance. I now had the possibility of coming home.”

Madrid said he almost squandered his chances. He earned punitive marks for insolence at juvenile hall and continued his involvement with gangs. Between these risky behaviors and his drug addiction, his future release was never guaranteed.

But at least initially, Madrid understood his unique opportunity. He spent his first few years of incarceration pursuing an education. With the encouragement of a volunteer at his juvenile detention center, Madrid received his GED at age 17 and began college after he entered an adult facility. Unfortunately, this first attempt ended when he was sent to solitary confinement.

As Madrid navigated the carceral system, he often sought guidance from advocates he met along the way. One such friend was Scott Budnick, a producer for “The Hangover” and the founder of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, an advocacy group that offers support to incarcerated individuals and seeks prison reform.

“I felt like they were my family in prison,” Madrid said. “They’re the only people that have been inside the prison cells and have seen firsthand the things that I had to go through. They know who I really was.”

Budnick met Madrid in juvenile detention through InsideOUT Writers, a creative writing program for incarcerated youth. After reading Madrid’s writing that focused on his life story, Budnick said he immediately saw a charismatic, hyper-intelligent leader who just needed a push in the right direction.

Over the next 13 years, Budnick kept in touch with Madrid through phone calls, letters and visits to make sure he stayed on the right track during his incarceration. Budnick’s goals for Madrid were clear: Get sober and get educated.

“You could tell that he was ambitious,” Budnick said. “He just had to turn all of those positive traits away from trying to accomplish something negative to try to accomplish something positive.”

Madrid felt that Budnick was instrumental to his success. In fact, the first thing Madrid mentioned about his incarceration – before I even asked my first question – was his long-standing friendship with Budnik.

Budnick reciprocates this admiration. While Madrid felt uncomfortable calling himself a role model during our interview, Budnick sees him as an undeniable inspiration.

“I don’t know how he did it, but he didn’t let any of that hold him back,” Budnick said. “He didn’t reduce his ambition or where he wanted his future to go. He just moved forward believing those things weren’t an issue, and I think that makes him an incredible mentor.”

Madrid enrolled at Imperial Valley College through a program for incarcerated students in 2018. But just as he began seriously reconsidering education, Madrid received unfortunate news. His stepfather, a man whom Madrid deeply respected, had passed away. When reflecting on his stepfather’s life, Madrid began to ponder his own journey: What was he going to do when he got out of prison?

Madrid strengthened his resolve to secure his future through education. Once he attended his first class in 2018, he never looked back. He earned his associate’s degree by the time he was released in early 2021.

As he navigated his new life, Madrid turned to community organizations for guidance. Eventually, Madrid found Homeboy Industries, an organization that supports formerly incarcerated or ganginvolved individuals. Once Madrid showed interest in applying to college, a mutual friend at Homeboy Industries connected him and Garcia, who supports formerly incarcerated students pursuing higher education through the Bruin Underground Scholars program.

Madrid was unfamiliar with the details of the college application process, a problem that many formerly incarcerated students face, Garcia said. She successfully helped Madrid review his transfer requirements and consolidate his transcripts into a complete application, which he sent to multiple colleges – including five of the 10 best public universities in the nation.

When Madrid told me he was admitted everywhere he applied, I couldn’t help but utter a dumbfounded, “Congratulations.”

The good news did not end there. With help from Homeboy Industries, Madrid received a substantial scholarship. He added that this scholarship, along with other resources from Homeboy Industries, has helped to ease the financial burdens of attending UCLA.

He now wants others to have that same experience.

“There’s a lot of more young men who are going to ... come out of prisons at a young age, they’re going to want to come back to our campuses,” Madrid said. “I believe that we should offer them the same accessibility that anybody else is going to get, as long as they have the grades.”

Besides his work as a full-time student, Madrid also works with Homeboy Industries as an academic education assistant. Jose Ocampo, Madrid’s case manager at Homeboy Industries, said the organization created the position specifically for Madrid.

“The initiative, his drive and his willingness to help peers and his community – we really wanted to hone in on that,” Ocampo said. “We created this position so that he has an avenue to pursue his goals, which was helping his community.”

Madrid is the first point of contact for any participant seeking educational support, whether it be enrolling in GED programs or starting college applications. He is living proof that higher education is attainable, Ocampo added.

“He pushed for a lot of folks to give it a shot,” Ocampo said. “He broke a lot of barriers for folks who thought it was impossible, and now he’s got a lot of folks enrolled in college.”

Madrid empathizes with the experiences of his peers and finds satisfaction in helping people reconstruct their lives after prison. He feels he is helping the next generation overcome the same challenges he faced. After graduation, he plans to continue this work, supporting the very neighborhoods he grew up in.

As Madrid shares his future aspirations, our interview runs late. At this point, we have given up our study room in Powell Library and are standing awkwardly on the steps outside. I have so many more questions – about his philosophy, his advocacy, his experiences – but I don’t have any more time. Instead, I ask him if there’s anything else he wants to share.

“My door is always open to teach somebody to follow the same path I did,” Madrid said. “You don’t have to follow me in a road that’s going to get you to prison. My road is now going to lead you to UCLA – or wherever you think you can go.”

I thank Madrid for his time. He walks down the steps of Powell Library, relaxed and nonchalant as he enters a sea of students in the shadow of Royce Hall.

I look down for a moment to check my phone. When I look back up, I can’t find him. He has blended into the crowd of students. As far as anyone can tell, he isn’t any different from the rest of them. ♦