A SECOND CHANCE: Jesse Vasquez’s story

Jesse Vasquez was 14 when he first landed behind bars. He returned again. And again. And again. This time, it was for the long run.

“I was just a bit impressionable and a whole lotta reckless. It led me down that path,” Vasquez said.

Though he mentions a blissful early childhood on a farm in Fountain Valley, his family’s move to the inner city when he grew older meant exposure to a different way of life. Crime, gangs, and drugs were suddenly at the forefront.

At 17, a drive-by shooting, attempted murder, and assault with a deadly weapon found Vasquez condemned with several life sentences.

He rattles off his charges listlessly as if it’s a mantra. As if it’s happened to a completely different person. And in a way, it has.

Now, at 39, Vasquez talks about “cognitive dissonance,” the discomfort he experienced when his two modes of thought began to contradict. His morality started to find itself at odds with the constant violence of prison.

“I started developing a conscience. There was no explanation for why we felt it was appropriate to inflict violence on one of us, or in general,” Vasquez said.

Troubled, Vasquez turned to reading and writing, landing himself on the news staff of San Quentin News.

San Quentin State Prison allowed Vasquez to flourish; he credits the supportive staff and accessible opportunities as crucial to his personal development. Being promoted to editor-in-chief of their newspaper was his crowning achievement. It gave him the platform he needed to balance the warped narrative of the incarcerated, to speak on behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves.

Vasquez is quick to criticize attitudes surrounding the incarcerated system, condemning how often the trauma of being incarcerated is overlooked. Prisoners are dehumanized and demonized, not holistically understood.

“We don’t want to think about their demands. We don’t have empathy for them,” Vasquez said.

His tone isn’t angry or accusatory, merely resigned.

“I believe in incarceration - a lot of people need to go to jail. But I believe there should be a mechanism for us to restore them to society,” Vasquez said.

He talks about hope — how it’s a double-edged sword for someone with life sentences — but especially how it comes hand in hand with disappointment. Hope is not dependable, especially for those without a release date.

Instead, Vasquez wants to see tangible help.

The barriers many face are both far-reaching and insurmountable. In terms of housing, property owners and management companies often have restrictions they must follow when housing formerly incarcerated. Additionally, the income level required to get into a house is high, and employment opportunities are few and far between.

“You have to make five times the rent you're gonna pay. That's ridiculous. Nobody makes 10 grand a month coming out of jail,” Vasquez said.

A study published by the National Institute of Justice examining more than 200 employees in the Milwaukee area found that formerly incarcerated candidates were less than half as likely to receive a job offer as their non-offender counterparts despite nearly identical professional experience.

Culturally, there are shocks too.

Vasquez describes his confusion regarding gender roles, explaining he was at a loss when asked for his pronouns after coming out of prison in 2019.

“I’ve been in the system since I was a kid. We didn’t do no pronoun announcements or anything. It wasn’t like we were that woke,” Vasquez said. “I eventually got to it.”

The challenges Vasquez faced ranged far and wide. So in readapting to society, he calls for more support.

Hoping to alleviate these struggles, Vasquez proposes a roadmap for prisoners to exit the system eventually.

Paul Bocanegra, a co-founder of ReEvolution, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing incarceration and recidivism in the community, agrees.

“Our juvenile system focuses on condemning children, saying they aren’t innocent. I can assure you that many of these kids, while they’re not innocent, haven’t had the opportunity to learn anything else,” Bocanegra said.

As a mentor for transitioning community members, Bocanegra has seen firsthand the lack of support Vasquez mentions.

And he’s frustrated.

Bocanegra wants to see restorative justice programs in juvenile halls: victim impact, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and life skill programs, just to name a few.

“If you don’t have a support system to help you overcome that hurdle – this is why we find so many young men and women saying, ‘I surrender. I can’t do it,’” said DeAnna Hoskins, president of JustLeadershipUSA, a national organization dedicated to driving prison policy reform.

This is a fact Vasquez knows well and seeks to change in his everyday efforts as the Friends of San Quentin News project director.

“Let’s not forget about the crimes, but let’s focus on the systemic issues that perpetuate those crimes,” Vasquez said.