How California Prisons Gang and Drug Culture Is Making Reform Difficult | Zach Skow | Hector Bravo

Hector, you're a former prison officer and Zach, you are involved in reform in California prisons. It's great to have you both on. We want to talk to you about what's happening in California prisons. Right now, the murder rates are on the rise and the death tolls are on the rise in the prisons. Hector, what do you think is going on? What's going on is safety and security within a correctional facility setting has taken a backseat to almost non-existence. And the focus lately, within the past two years, has been the California model. Zach, you might have a different perspective on this. There are certain very beneficial elements to the California model that put an onus on programming and what you're trying to do is give hope and opportunity to those who are willing and able to participate. They're bringing their points down, they're getting out of prison gang politics and into programming. I always talk about getting out of the rut of gang politics, which just completely occupies your time when you're incarcerated, and moving instead into the groove of prison programming, where instead of feeding the needs of your gang or your race or any of these other nefarious energies, you're putting your energy into rehabilitation, into programming, into helping your brothers and the youth offender programs and other kinds of beneficial means to help make prison feel more like a place of rehabilitation. CDCR, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, has always had these terms in their title and they're making an effort to get us there. And I think to a certain degree, it's almost unfair to ask people to operate in that model. If you don't feel safe and you're constantly under threat of violence, it's very difficult to do that. You mentioned safety. How do you see that right now? What's going on for the correctional officers? To simplify it, it's like police officers on the streets. You tell them, hey, yeah, you can carry that gun, but we don't want you to use that gun, no matter what happens. And your job is just to go around gang neighborhoods and just go get that basketball and go play shoot some hoops with them. But if a call for service comes, don't answer that. They won't put that in writing, but they'll fire cops that are actually doing their job per policy and procedure. So the way I look at it is correctional officers have a role to make sure that inmates don't jump over the fence, kill each other or kill the correctional officers. I believe if they want to hire individuals, which they already have, rec therapists, their titles are rec therapists. They're the ones that partake in the activities with the inmates, throwing footballs, playing card games, reading them newspapers, putting movies on the television set in front of them. So they've handcuffed the correctional officers from performing their duties. How is this impacting the inmates? In a nutshell, it's like having a bratty child not being able to be disciplined. It just gets worse, worse, and you reward bad behavior. There's zero consequences. They've even removed the restricted housing unit, the ADSEG. There used to be crimes that an inmate would commit, masturbation with exposure. Let's say an inmate exposes himself to a female correctional officer. In the past, he used to go to ADSEG, the hole. Now they no longer go to the hole. Even more serious and severe one, in the past if an inmate got caught with a weapon, a shank, they used to go to the hole. Now they do not go to the hole. So I want you to imagine if people are getting caught with knives and nothing's happening to them, masturbating and nothing's happening to them, they just keep taking that bar higher. And that's why you're seeing murders and attempted murders on correctional officers. Zach, we had one of your former students, Brian James, who came on the show, that he was looking for every program possible. He wanted to get out. Are there categories of inmates that are actively looking? The prison population is made up of all kinds of different swaths of people. But I think for the most part, the incarcerated, when given a chance at programming, would take it. But you have to have hope and opportunity woven into your mind. And if you don't have any hope or opportunity, and you got nothing to lose, and you're looking at a very long term, decades more in prison, maybe life without, what good do you, what motivation do you have to benefit yourself? Some of these guys can even be at risk for joining in with programming and trying to better their lives. So you have to try to create an environment that incentivizes people to succeed and to pursue programming. And it's my experience that if you can shift the culture within a prison yard even a little bit to really integrate programming in successfully, you will change the entire environment on that yard. I mean, in terms of the California model and what I perceive it to be as it relates to programming, what I see programming do for a prison yard is make it much less violent. There's less drugs that are used and circulated. There's a lot more cooperation between correctional officers and the incarcerated, which is rare. Because usually if you're locked up and you're chatting with a correctional officer, what's going on here? Why are you talking to that person? There's a certain amount of leeriness where they're cautious. Why would you be, why are we having this exchange? If you're programming and you're in the dog program and you've got special privileges for freedom and mobility, you're going to have to be communicating with correctional officers relatively often. And what the California model seeks to do is improve cooperation with correctional officers and the incarcerated, improve communication and relationships with that group of people that have to coexist on this yard. There are incentives within programming. So if you misbehave, if you don't fall in line with what's expected of you, you will lose that privilege. You will lose the ability to participate in that program. That program in many cases will take time off of your sentence. That program in many cases will help you reduce your points, therefore getting you on a lesser secure yard, increasing your chance at access to new programs, access to different facilities and access to getting out. The biggest problem we have with programs is there are very, very few of them, especially on maximum security yards. You know, we were talking about, you know, Mr. Bravo's at Corcoran State Prison. We ran a level four 180 dog program, the only kind of its, of its nature in the United States of America. Most dog programs are on less secure yards. Level three, level four inmates, especially on a 180 have almost no programming. So there's very little to plug yourself into. And who are these inmates? Are they, are the ones that have committed murder? Level four and level three incarcerated are almost all involved in, in loss of life crimes. They're almost all involved in gang enhancements. I have guys that are looking at life without parole for enhancements. They have that many enhancements tacked onto different offenses. But the point I'm trying to make is that a lot of these guys are hungry for change. A lot of these guys are hungry for a way up and out to, to believe in themselves, to feel some self-esteem, to be believed in. People like myself, individuals, just educators, people who are trying to leave a positive streak in this world have to come into prison and teach classes, you know, and there's not a lot of folks doing that. Not a lot of people want to come onto a level four prison, you know, where, where students are, are got cardboard and books, you know, taped to them for potential violent encounters on the yard. It's a, it's a, prison is a, I got such empathy for Mr. Bravo here because I get to walk in there representing love. I get to be somebody who dabs everybody up, who hugs everybody, who says, you know, I get referred to as big bro. I get to walk in there and believe in you, you know, which is a really unique position. And CDCR, Mr. Macomber, everybody within the Department of Rehabilitative Programs has given me this chance to go in there and, and be like father boy, like go believe in guys and root them on and, and, and really love on them because that's what they've been missing. Conversely, Mr. Bravo and his associates have to go in there and maintain order and be kind of the, not just the figurative police, but the literal police. So it's a whole different, whole different line that we're having to walk each of us, but we're both very necessary. So you think that California model, it's made it less strict so that guards don't have as much say or as much authority anymore, but, but you're saying the programs are not available. Is that, is that the case? No. What he said is right on the money, 100%. You do need security and you do need rehabilitation. Remember, I joined the department in 2006. I resigned in 2022. Since 2006 and on, it has been a gradual reduction of security. Security being instilled at the Academy into the cadets. That's their first show to the department. You're in a 16 week Academy. You're here to learn about prison instead of teaching you how to make sure that they don't kill each other or kill anybody or escape. They're teaching you about transgenders. They're treating you about the California model. They're teaching the officers about, Hey, this person might have suffered trauma when he was younger. So it's, it's, that's why he's attacking you. That's why he's attacking other people. That's not the correctional officer's role. And I don't know how things should be structured. I think correctional officers, like he said, it is such an acutely violent place where at any minute things can pop off. Like you, you, you just never know what's going to happen. And that energy, when you walk into a prison, it is a thick fog of negative energy of this anticipatory energy. And especially if things have been hot, you know, there for whatever reason, where certain races aren't going on, or there's been a stabbing or there's been a assault on an officer. You just feel it everywhere you go. And so to ask correctional officers to step so far outside of their, their comfort zone or their responsibilities. To become more like therapists, like is that what you're asking? But what he's, he made a really good point that there are rec therapists, there are people, there is a whole nother cross section of individual that we could integrate into the prison system to make it safer and to bridge the gap between the incarcerated and the administration, the authorities. Cause it's, it's critically necessary. And you're right. I mean, I never really thought about it from your vantage point, but it's gotta be such a struggle to know that you have to toe the line from a security standpoint to keep yourself safe and your brothers safe. But also you're trying to open yourself up to being rehabilitatively supportive and conscientious and empathetic. Like what a difficult, you know, you're asking people to be juggled and hide completely. You're not supposed to do that as a guard, right? You're not supposed to get involved with the inmates. But if you do, then you might lose the authority, multiple things. You might lose authority or perceived to lose authority. You may be opened up to manipulation, but one thing to point out is there's 90,000 plus inmates of all personalities, of all personalities. You do have the ones that want to rehabilitate. You absolutely do. And there's a large chunk of those, but you also have the ones that are mentally unstable. The same guys that you see on skid row, yelling at the air, assaulting people for no reason. You have serial killers, psychopaths, sociopaths. So it's very diverse. And the reason that the correctional officers always had that line in the sand was, and I would compare it to war, you know, and police, a lot of lessons were learned in blood. There's a lot of reasons why things were done a certain way for so long, because people found out the hard way. You do have to communicate with inmates, 100%. And I do not advocate for mistreating or belittling or being, you know, over authority, abusing inmates. You got to be able to communicate, understand your environment and be able to protect yourself and others. I got to give CDCR some credit for some cultural change though. And maybe we're onto something here in terms of how to balance out from an educational standpoint, from a security standpoint, from a therapeutic counselor standpoint, you know, what the balance needs to be. But when I first started going in, in 2015, they called it familiar contact. You know, you're not allowed to touch people, you're not allowed to, you're not shaking their hands. You're not hugging them. Why not? Because it's set yourself up for manipulation. It's called familiar contact. You probably know it better. If I'm an inmate, right, and I shake an officer's hand, all I have to do is pull him in and slice his neck with a razor. Has it happened? More than 10 times it has happened. That's more than enough for me to not want to do that. Does that make sense? You have to be very cautious at all times because your life is on the line. Me, conversely, I don't think about it ever. I always... Because they won't come after you. Well, no, that's not necessarily true. It's not necessarily true. You know, because I'm someone who's shown up year after year after year for these guys, they know that I'm rooting for them. I mean, I exist like a big brother. I am in there to tell you I love you. I'm in there to tell you I believe in you. And here's what I did that helped me get up and out of my rut. You know, so I have to be able to apply myself empathetically, conscientiously, and lovingly. And in the beginning, that was not allowed. And then in talking to the warden, the warden said, hey, look, this is just like an AA or an NA meeting. This gentleman here exists to believe in these guys, and you got to let him do what he needs to do to believe in these guys. And to a degree, Mr. Bravo is right. Like I am somewhat putting myself at risk, but because I've known most of these guys for years. And also remember, like when I come onto a prison yard, I might be operating out of housing unit five. So I'll have some dogs with me. I'm walking to housing unit five, but I'm going by one, two, three, and four on my way there. I'm saying hi to everybody. I'm trying to make sure I connect guys with the white guys, the black guys, the northerners, the southerners, everybody. I'm trying to make sure I'm respectful of this entire environment because I'm a visitor in this environment. This isn't my home. And I need to try to, and also just to let everybody know like why I'm here and the potential I see within all of you guys, because people are hesitant to change unless they feel believed in. You know, some of it just goes back to wanting your father to approve of you and to believe in you. And that's, I found it so necessary to occupy that role where my job is to believe in you, to try to facilitate growth in you. And there's no group of individual that will show you what they're made of more in a positive way than the incarcerated from my experience. These guys will take that little bit of love, belief, and motivation that you give them and they will turn it into a successful career within months. I mean, there are guys who have come, who have spent 20 years incarcerated with their, you know, politicking within their gang, soldiering, doing what they got to do to survive. And then who joined the dog program and in a year and a half later are profoundly different individuals. They're doing youth offender program mentoring, they're doing sobriety, they're doing OMCP programming. They have changed their entire existence for the better because you gave them an opportunity and believed in them. And I think that's, those are the aspects of the California model that I appreciate. In this week's edition of Epoch Times, there are some key headlines in California that could impact the state significantly in the future. One of them is a major reform to California environmental law for building new housing. This environmental law has been used for a lot of lawsuits against developments and this new law will change that. Another key story this week is the fact that California schools could lose about $1 billion of funding over gender policies from the federal government. Another key story is California is moving forward with an excise tax on marijuana. This is going to impact the legalized marijuana industry significantly. We've also covered the fact that Nordstrom is leaving a key Santa Monica mall. Make sure to check out our California edition of Epoch Times. The stories written in the paper are multifaceted. We interview a lot of different sources for these stories and they have a lot of sites to them. You can click on the link below and get a special deal to the paper for a dollar per week for the first month. And make sure to let us know what you think of the paper. You come and go, right? Yeah. But you guys need to hold the place together. 24-7. Never stops. And if you connect and you have a really good relationship with the inmates, they might manipulate you. You know, I hear people say relationships in prison, like, and I hear other people speak on inmates' relationship with officers. I don't like that word relationships because I think there should not be relationships. Definitely a rapport. A rapport, having a conversation. But what he said is, it's perfect, it's right on the money. Everything he's saying is 100% true. There's definitely people that want to rehabilitate, that get that hope. Hope is the biggest thing. Hope in prison. I've seen in prison when people did not have hope, when lifers were not going home, and after when lifers were going home, that changed the mood, per se. So to answer your question about what can lead to over-familiarization or what's an example, here's a perfect one. There was a female correctional officer at the prison I worked at. She had a body-worn camera. Because the dynamics of the prison system, right, you're supposed to listen to the inmates now. An inmate approached her and said, hey, turn off your camera. I got something to tell you. And I don't know why she did this, but she turned off her body-worn camera, like, hey, what's up with your number? Can I get that? That's just a form of manipulation, right? But that just goes to tell you the different levels of predatorial behavior. You got to understand, there's people in there with sex crimes, rape, child molestation. I'm all for the pooch program or the dog program. That's a very great program, and it does work. But there are some individuals that, I mean, I don't know, I wouldn't give a child molester a dog. Yeah, we have rules within who we can offer programming to. We don't allow sex predators or animal abusers or things like that into the program. But you really do have to think about, what is my experience with the average student inmate? The average student inmate, like I said, has been gang-affiliated since they were children, most likely committed their crime while children or on the tailhood of childhood or in the early stages of adulthood, usually before they're 22, usually before a fully developed prefrontal cortex. And usually coming off such a violent, turbulent, unfulfilled, negative, dark childhood, traumas that we can't imagine, and not just like making poor decisions, but just not having any choices. Not knowing choices. Not having any choices to make that are positive. And what I see with most of my guys have been politicking in a normative way within prison for the last 10 or 15 years. That's all they've been doing is serving whatever they need to do to survive. And they're taking their first steps into programming. So I get to see this really beautiful transition where these, in many cases, young men become men. They become responsible. So they change the way they look at everything. I think the only way you can count on someone to improve is if they have self-esteem. To get better or to even be conscious of a lot of the things around them. And self-esteem is earned through action. You can only gain self-esteem through contributing and to being of service is an incredible way to gain self-esteem because you're using your darkness, your experience, your trauma to help improve the life of somebody else. I think a lot of people will hear what Hector is saying and say, well, you've got this binary opinion of kind of like correctional officers here, inmates there. And I think what we have to understand that he's saying is like, from a violence standpoint, Hector was talking about, you got some people in there who are trying to succeed and others who are committed to a dark path. And he's right, man. I mean, we have EOP guys who are on our yard and these extensive outpatients. So who are EOPs? Mentally unstable. Yeah. Severely. Sometimes they're faking it. Sometimes they're really off the rocker. And those people are really difficult to coexist with on a yard. So we have to operate our program, which is out in the housing unit. It's on the yard. And some of the most intense, almost catastrophes that we have are interacting with that population. So I think some of what correctional officers like Mr. Bravo have been presenting or discussing is, how can we gather the group of individuals who we can acknowledge are trying to better themselves and are on that path and get them in a rehabilitative setting? And how can we keep the dangerous people who are bringing down the entire group? How can we maybe incarcerate them somewhere else? And we had things like SADF, right? Like, I always wondered why Corcoran SADF is the Corcoran Substance Abuse Treatment Facility. So when I heard that acronym, I thought, oh, this is amazing. It's a substance abuse treatment facility. It was really only that in name. It didn't operate as a substance abuse treatment facility. So I think we should start having facilities like that dedicated to substance abuse. So is there a lot of drugs? For some of us that may not be familiar with the prison system, is there a lot of drugs in the prisons now? There's a lot of drugs. A lot of drugs. It's ubiquitous. It is everywhere. And people are doing it every day? Yeah, there's drug addiction. There's some people that do drugs but are not addicted to drugs. Self-medicating, heroin, fentanyl, bath salts, spice. It's unlimited. Suboxone. This is a huge problem, right? Drugs have always been a big problem in prison, since the beginning of prison. And how do they get them in there? Various ways. Female visitors or visitors that come in. Corrupt staff members, corrupt correctional officers, medical, volunteers that come in from the outside. But the latest and greatest is drone drops. If you don't give people access to sobriety and the steps required to get sober and stay sober, they're going to fall out of that groove and back into the rut. If you want to get people out of a rut and into a groove, you have to provide sobriety. You have to provide access to sobriety. What percentage of inmates do you think that are doing drugs and are addicted? I would say over 50% do drugs. I'll say easily over 50% as well. If you can imagine, I'm somebody in recovery, I'm coming up on 17 years sober. If you're trying to better yourself and you're trying to continue forth with that energy of recovery and trying to improve yourself, it's really difficult to do it when you're in an environment where so many people are strung out. Hector was talking about spice and some of these other drugs. They're really problematic from just the energy. People are losing their minds. You're watching psychotic breakdowns. Yeah, they're butt naked, yelling for their mom, running around, disrupting other inmates that just want to be left alone, breaking state property. As an officer, you have to go over there and put the inmates in handcuffs. Do you see that daily or do you see that on a regular basis? Not daily, regular. Regular enough for me to tell you. I do want to emphasize that we've talked a lot about a lot of different variables inside of a prison. I do want to give credit to those individuals that are in his program. Those are who I consider the OGs, the inmates, the convicts that have been around in the game a long time. I knew a lot of those when I was growing up in the department at a very young correctional officer. The respect that they showed me then for me being brand new, that resonated. That stuck out. As I would promote through my career, sergeant, lieutenant, because I would later run into those individuals. Those guys, for the viewers just wondering, hey, who are these types of guys, man? Is anybody capable of being rehabilitated? Those guys are. Those guys in fact are. They grew up in a street gang. They lacked the guidance, the mentorship, sometimes the father figure. They joined gangs to find that love, that bond, that purpose. In the process of their activities, somebody got killed. During the 90s, they got put away for a long time, 25 to life. You tax on the enhancements, drug enhancements, or the gun enhancements, gang enhancements. The result is your parole officer hasn't been born yet. Correct. We have a mutual friend that is a perfect example of change. I believe God put each of us individuals here on this earth for our purpose. I myself am coming up on 15 years of sobriety. I definitely take this serious. I'm passionate about it. Zach is passionate about it. What a perfect platform to be able to let the public know exactly what is transpiring in the CDCR. There is a possibility to make major changes for a number of individuals that are in the system. Yes. Oh, yeah. Our program in the last 10 years caters to the long-term incarcerated. We're working with guys who have been part of the gang politicking pipeline and culture in prison for many decades. Guys who have seen it all, been through it all, shot callers, etc., and all the rest of it. What we've seen is by plugging these guys into the hope and opportunity that resonates within the pet industry, saying to these guys, all right, if you want to carve out a groove for yourself to be employed as a professional dog trainer when you get out of here, that's going to happen. This is going to happen. These are the simple steps we have to take to make that happen. Then they're all in. This has happened time and time again. We have 27 formerly incarcerated dog trainers, almost all of whom are black and brown former gang members. It's not like the pet industry was ready built for black and brown former gang members, but we're finding a tremendous amount of opportunity in the pet industry as behaviorists, technicians, various types of professionals. These guys are getting out of prison. They're giving back to their community by rehabilitating problematic dogs. They're becoming small business owners, entrepreneurs. In some cases, they're hiring their brothers when they get out. They're creating this new trajectory of hope and opportunity that can be made available to so many other guys. This is a really, really important point. From what I'm gathering in this conversation, the path that we have created, when people go to prison, it's either the gang's path, continuing what they were doing, and that's pretty much defined. There's a model where people will approach you and this is how you survive. Most people go that route, but there can be another path where you can lay out the process you can go through. When you put it that way, that sounded like it made sense, but right now they're mixing everything and everyone. The department, CDCR, has began to mix everything and everyone, to include the gentlemen that partake in his class, with the EOP mentally unstable, with the drug-addicted people, with the assaultive people. Because they don't have access to step work, there isn't access to a lot of sober programs. There's a lot of tangential access where you're kind of like sobriety adjacent. There's spiritual programs. There are meetings that come in, but not very often are people working with a sponsor, are people having the tools and the regimented shift of your life. We were talking earlier about some of the things that you do spiritually to benefit your life, to set up a routine of structure and altruism, and how to get you through some of the difficult times. These guys don't have any of those tools and we need to provide them with tools to be able They lack positive coping skills. Positive coping skills is something I didn't learn about until the year 2010, at the age of 26. So I totally understand where some of these individuals' mindsets are, totally. And they're not bad people, they're just haven't developed those positive coping skills. How did you learn those? Well, I myself sought treatment at the veterans hospital for post-traumatic stress disorder. And that's when I learned about me, emotions. Hey, Hector, you know, it's not normal to just bust out and rage all the time. You think you're sad? And I would get offended. No, I'm not sad, right? But it's okay to be sad. It's okay to be happy. It's okay to be upset. So learning emotions, also learning how to respond versus react. I can tell you all the things that were light bulbs to me because I used to react. And now I try to take a pause and respond. Meditation, like you mentioned earlier. There's all kinds, breathing techniques, grounding yourself. Once these men figure out these coping skills and have the willingness to change, they will change. Yeah, I was the same way. When I got sober at 28, I was a child. I was a small, small child in terms of how I reacted, how I processed emotions. And I'll give you a really good example. We were at Corcoran, at Old Corcoran. It was our first graduation. And there had been a lockdown and a bunch of events. So some of the guys didn't make it to graduation. I drove up there the next week to give some graduation certificates to guys that weren't able to make it to graduation. And this is back when they still had shoes set up. So I go into that housing unit and two of the guys who were in the program, they're talking to each other. And the essence of it was that one of them was so sad that the dogs had left to go be adopted because they'd been there for 14 weeks. They'd spent three months developing this deep relationship, a relationship like they'd never had. A true, empathetic, well-woven bond. And all of a sudden, they're gone. And so he was just sad. And what he wanted to do to express his sadness was to go on the yard and hurt somebody. And he was planning exactly what he was going to do, and he knew what his next step was. And it was his brother from the program who put his arm around him and said, hey man, you're experiencing sadness right now. And I'm feeling sad too for the following reasons. And it's okay, let's go take a walk. Let's talk about how we're sad. And just that shift from how your normative way of responding to sadness would be violence. So you've got to show them a new way. You break in the cycle, the pattern. Because had that individual assaulted, committed violence, he would have gone to AD-SIG. It would have just continued the pattern. So he would not be able to get into these programs again. Yes, it would have just been that cycle, right? So it's all about substituting bad habits for good habits. Is it possible to do that on a larger scale as people come into the prison system? It's difficult because you have so many different age groups, ages, different offenses, crimes, maturity levels, opportunities, experiences. It's so... What I think CDCR has done, clearly, is like a blanket. Everybody, everybody gets the same treatment. What I've observed that is probably the most negative response to our work is like, why do you work with these guys? You know, but the reason we do it is because they are redeemable souls, because they can rehabilitate and become good. And there's no more valuable work to do. I mean, when you can be part of and feel someone's positivity, when they've turned that corner and fundamentally changed their lives, there's nothing more positive. And I'm convinced it's that type of purpose and like zeal that we can all get into. That's what gives us self-esteem. That's what gives us purpose on this earth, is seeing how your love, your application, your empathy can change a person's entire life. And we lose sight of that. And instead we hunker down in this, you know, those people are negative. We should just lock them up, throw away the key, execute them if you need to. Execute them. You know, and I just can't. That is such a fundamentally low frequency state of mind that is not going to get us anywhere but division and hatred. So American society as a whole is morally bankrupt, right, in 2025. In the prison system, it is the most toxic environment I have ever been in. And I've been in combat. Combat was not even close to being this toxic. And he's right when the correctional officers will look down upon volunteers, people that come in and offer their services for the inmates. But don't feel bad, bro. Half of the COs don't like me, man, and all I've been preaching is their defense. I don't at all blame correctional officers that I've come in contact with who were negative about me. Like, I get it. They see a dude with like tattoos and like skate clothes on who's hugging on people that they may have had conflicts with. And they're going, what is wrong with this dude? Oh, no doubt. Yeah, conflicts. And I can see that. And I'm guilty of being that peace officer. I'm guilty of having those biases. And it's all from experience or lack of knowledge, lack of experience. And like you said, I've gotten into numerous altercations with numerous inmates. So it is a us versus them mentality. I wanted to give CDCR a lot of props for how they've allowed me to be loving. You know, it's difficult to say to yourself, all right, man, I'm going to walk into prison today. I'm going to be as loving as humanly possible because you get shut down. You do. There are dudes who don't want to talk to you. There are dudes who are like, hey, what's this fool all about? He's being awful like chummy with me. Other guys get it because we have a relationship. But you really, if you want to provide rehabilitation, if you want to provide opportunity to a group of people, you have to be the example. You have to come in there and represent love. You got to. And that's that's something that they've allowed me to do against policy. They've let me go in there and provide familiar contact in the form of hugs and the forms of looking guys in the eye and say, hey, great job today, bro. I saw that you did this, that and the other. And that's what I'm talking about. And, you know, really, there has to be a culture of I believe in you. Was there a point where you felt scared because you were kind of going out of your way? Yeah. In this really dangerous places, as you mentioned. I feel scared all the time in there. Yeah, I feel I feel intimidated and scared all the time. It's impossible not to. When you go on to a level four yard like Tehachapi, like a yard or B yard, you know, this is a security housing unit set up. It's set up like administrative segregation. So it's a lot of corners and nooks and a lot of human cages. You know, they have these personal exercise units, which are these big ass, gigantic human cages. And you got guys lined up in them, you know, doing calisthenics and counting off, and it's an intimidating place to be. But I think partially because of that reason, it's also an exhilarating place to be positive. I'm unaccompanied. I'm walking through the entire prison with a dog and just saying hi to everybody. So you never know. Certainly you're going to end up with some interactions that are a lot less positive. But for the most part, if you make that commitment that I'm going to be positive, I'm bringing love and light into this institution no matter what. I'm going to keep my chin up. I'm a smile at everybody. This was a real process I had to go to when I started at Cal City and then at Wasco and North Kern and then at Corcoran. It was like, I'm just going to keep my eyes down. I'm not going to try to acknowledge everybody, because every time you acknowledge somebody, they don't know. You know, there's a potential for disagreement or why are you staring at me or why are you smiling at me, fool? I don't know you. What are you trying to, you know, there's this odd dynamic. I did that for like a year and I couldn't exist in that anymore. It was so hard for me to walk with my head down, not acknowledging people. So from that point on, I made the commitment. I'm making eye contact with every person I see. I'm going to acknowledge from a respect standpoint, every person I see, correctional officer or inmate. And I'm going to try to empathize with every person I see here. Hey, sir, how was if I'm speaking to a sergeant or lieutenant? How you doing, sir? How's your day going? What's the feeling like on the yard? You know, hey, you know, spooky or any of the other guys that are in the program. How was your day? What's going on at home? You know, really try to to to to see them, man, to see both of them. Correctional officers and and inmates. You really got to. And if you if CDCR can get more people like that who who are genuinely who are almost like they're bringing the positive. Yeah, you got to leave a positive streak wherever you go to the officers and to the inmates, right? I would recommend listening to the correctional officers and heeding advice. They're the ones in the housing units. They're the ones on the yard. They know which inmates want to program. They know which way inmates wanted to continue their BS. We'll start there. We'll take recommendations and advice from your foot soldiers, which makes sense to me. I think part of what Hector is talking about is like, listen to innovative ideas of sergeants and lieutenants who are on those yards. If what you're looking for is cooperation and communication, what are ways we can legitimately facilitate cooperation and communication? Because you can't, on the one hand, expect these guys to be you know, they're expected to create a rigid and impenetrable barrier of safety for themselves and others. But they're also expected to cross over and also be kind of a counselor. How do you occupy? How do you that's such a dichotomy of polarizingly different ideas? You know, you have to be an emotional magician to be able to turn it off and turn it on like they're expected to do. So I think I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but like having certain facilities that are 100 percent dedicated to programming and trajectory. You know, if you if you have proven over and over and over again that you are not about rehabilitative life and you are about politicking and and not improving, then perhaps you should be in one type of institution. If you are committed and want to change your life and we ought to provide guys with the way to begin that initial step, because that's the the hardest one is that initial step. How do we get you up out of that politicking into the programming groove? We got to find ways to facilitate that. And and just like in any class, in any advanced placement class, say the class is only going to perform as well as its worst student. You know, you're always going to be drugged down by your worst student. So if we're operating in facilities where we're a percentage of the guys don't really want to be there, they're just trying to exploit the program. The program is not going to succeed as much, which are some of the issues that we've had. So designated institutions for people that want to program and have designated institutions that people that do not want to program. I wanted to say one other thing about what CDCR can do to improve itself and make things better. And I've seen it developing firsthand, and it's been really heartening. Back in the day, you would never see a warden shake somebody's hand or hug them. You never certainly have them give a phone call when you've gotten out of prison after a 25 year bid for being taking part in a loss of life crime, right? We've had over and over and over again the last couple of years. Wardens, some of these guys were captains that worked their way up to A.W. that then worked their way up to warden. But we've had them reach out and show support in a way to our students. You know, so wardens are showing up to graduations and they're shaking hands, each person's hand. And they're saying, hey, good, good job, Flores. You know, good job, Amandares. Good job, guys. Like really acknowledging these, reaching out and bridging a gap between the administration at the facility and a lowly inmate. They're saying, hey, I see you. I respect you. Good work. And we had one of our guys, you know, one of my best friends who served a 25 year prison sentence, and he had gotten to know his captain, who then became his associate warden over the years, who then became warden. And when he got out, he got a phone call from the warden saying, hey, man, I saw you were out. I just want to say I'm proud of you. Good job. And that may seem like something very little, but to have a warden take time out of their day to connect with somebody who was incarcerated under their watch and to say, hey, I'm proud of you. Good job. I've seen you all these years. And I just want you to know, you know, that is so big, man. That's the dynamic that we're missing. That's the love from the father. I know it sounds weird, you know, but but people like the warden, people even like myself represent the big brother and the father in many cases to these individuals. And we have this really unique opportunity to believe in them and put wind in their sails. You know, over the years, I've learned a lot about suicide rates within correctional officers. I've seen the energy. I've felt the energy. And I one of the only things I can say is I feel I feel terrible. I watch the energy and the maybe fear isn't the right word, but I think we know it is the right word that these guys have to carry into work every single day, like an acute sense of vigilance and acute sense of I can be hurt today, a sense that I might not be coming home today. That is something. And it's oppressively hot where we work, right? It's always in the hundreds of degrees for six or seven months out of the year. What is a way that, you know, what is a sensible, practical way that we could like immediately and expeditiously change the frequency of existence that correctional officers have to go through? Because I'm so it's painful to watch, you know, and there's a shortage of staffing right now, right? Valuing the correctional officer, legitimately valuing them. He just said that the warden will go around and shake all the inmates hands at graduation. That's true. But that same warden will not go around and not shake one officer's hand. As officers, we see that as that we see that it builds resentment. Oh, you want to shake those dudes hands, but you won't shake our hand. And that is what drives a lot of people to suicide, feeling hopeless, feeling no way out. Whistleblower Act, that's a non-existent Office of Internal Affairs. They're on the green side. They're on the administration side. So it's like you're getting beat up from all angles, administration, inmates and the public. They feel that they have no way out. And they're actually it's bad, man. I quit. You know, I have seen when I have seen the difference between a correctional officer who's forced to be like purely defensive and kind of always looking out for for danger, as opposed to those who get to work close with programs and when they get to feel some of the believe in energy that I was talking about. And I think that's when I've seen their their work as correctional officers change is when they get plugged into some of the positivity, because as the nature of correctional work is just incessantly negative. There's almost nothing positive about it. I saw a new correctional officer who I knew from the streets, and I saw him at work one time. And, you know, they had just had a big code on the yard. I think it was like back to back to back codes. And what's a code? It's like an alarm. So an incident happened. And, you know, it was pepper balls and or flashbangs. And and then I saw him standing next to the, you know, the human, the cage for for whoever's involved in the incident. I put him in the holding cell. Yeah. And I saw, you know, he was standing next to that dude. And he looked like a different person, you know, watching this human who I'd known for years. I know his expressions. I know his energy. I know the vibe he gives off. And to see him standing next to this dude post incident as a correctional officer, everything in him was different. You know, it was like his innocence was gone. It was like his access to he's certainly uncomfortable, certainly hypervigilant. But I think one of the things that's really righteous about what Hector's doing is like to expect people to exist in that frequency of of violence and hypervigilance and is a is almost unfair. You know, you can't exist in that frequency for that period of time and not have it take its toll on every aspect of your life. Even marriage. Yeah. Even your relationships. That's why the divorce rate is high. Yeah. DUI's, domestic violence. It carries over. There was a class recently at North Kern where three of our 24 students were in there for felony loss of life DUI. These are normal people. Normal, right? No gang affiliations, no. Who had killed people in drunk driving accidents, one of whom was a highway patrol. So this guy just smoked weed, wasn't drinking. None of those things. And and hit and struck an officer. So these are these are normal. These are as normal as you and I, these individuals. And it's really important to understand that they are because we're not going to get programming. We're not going to get access to improvement and help unless we view them as children of God, just like the rest of us. And I really hope that we can get away from that cultural necessity of making them different from us because they're not different from us. They're God's children, just like we are. They are. They are biological material with souls who, again, are unshakably good and belong to all of us, you know. So Zach's cow, prison reform expert and Hector Bravo, former correctional officer. It was great to have you in California. Thank you so much for your insights.