Silicon Valley turns prisoners into programmers at San Quentin

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. — The men in prison-issued blues sit side by side at long wood tables, learning to write software code on refurbished computers in a bare-bones lab inside San Quentin State Prison.

On the wall hangs a sign with the famous Steve Jobs slogan, "Think Different."

You can't think much differently than this.

Inmates inside these aging walls are cut off from the technology being built just miles away in Silicon Valley. Many have never touched a computer mouse, let alone a smartphone.

Those who have jobs in prison usually make license plates for California residents, furniture for state agencies or reflective gear for transportation workers.

But now, through a rigorous new coding boot camp called Code.7370, 18 men are learning to become programmers.

The effort is believed to be the first of its kind in the country.

Code.7370 is housed inside a converted printing shop where inmates used to churn out state forms and documents. Four days a week inmates come here to be taught the basics of computer coding by seasoned instructors from Hack Reactor, a programming boot camp in San Francisco.

The goal: That in six months inmates will have the coding chops to land work as entry-level Web developers.

It's ambitious. Many inmates have missed the Internet revolution. They have never gone online to post an update on Facebook or search for something on Google.

Though some in the class knew their way around computers, others had to learn for the first time how to use a mouse, keyboard and monitor, even how to turn on a computer.

"I have been in this (class) a month and I can already develop a Web page, a decent Web page," said Aly Tamboura, who is serving a 14-year sentence for assault with a deadly weapon.

"When I first came in prison, I was worrying about my kids. Now that I am on my way out, I am worrying about what I am going to do when I get out," he said. "This answers that question. Now I am going to have marketable skills where I can walk out of prison and say, 'Hey, I can build websites. I can write code.'"

CODE.7370

Code.7370 is one of a growing number of initiatives to address a looming challenge for California. The state has one of the largest prison populations in the United States and one of the highest rates of recidivism.

With the prison system under pressure to ease overcrowding by reducing its prison population, two Bay Area technology veterans are applying Silicon Valley ingenuity to the problem.

Code.7370 is the brainchild of husband-and-wife team Chris Redlitz and Beverly Parenti, who for the last four years have been teaching entrepreneurship to inmates through the nonprofit program they founded in San Francisco called The Last Mile.

Over the course of six months, inmates are put through an intensive business boot camp. They brainstorm a start-up idea and come up with a business plan.

On "Demo Day" they present their ideas in five-minute pitches to dozens of Silicon Valley investors and executives.

Tamboura, for example, worked as a surveyor before he went to prison. He came up with an idea for a mobile app that directs first responders to the location of underground utilities.

The inmates can't start companies in prison, but they pick up experience and, perhaps more importantly, confidence. When paroled, Last Mile graduates are given paid internships at high-tech start-ups.

From the start, Redlitz and Parenti had hoped to also give incarcerated men the coding skills they would need to land jobs after prison. But they first had to overcome a considerable hurdle: Creating a program that teaches coding without giving inmates access to the Internet.

With the help of Hack Reactor and the backing of the California Prison Industry Authority and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Code.7370 is doing just that.

Code.7370 got its name from the Standard Industrial Classification Code for computer programming. The program doesn't just teach coding, it instills a belief in these men that "they are worthy of having a job and contributing to society when they get out," said Redlitz, a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor

One morning this week, the inmates were using JavaScript to build a Tic-Tac-Toe game. They worked in pairs. Each has a keyboard, a monitor and a mouse, but shared one cursor.

Two instructors were on hand to coach the inmates and another taught the class virtually via a Google Hangout video conference.

Computers were loaded with reference materials so that inmates who have no Internet connection could look up answers when they were stumped.

Chris Schuhmacher sat in the front row. He is serving a long stretch for second-degree murder and goes before the parole board in May.

One of 100 men who applied for Code.7370, Schuhmacher says he has always been drawn to technology.

"For the past 15 years I haven't been able to touch it or use it, but I have been able to see it on TV and I just feel like this whole world has been passing me by," he said. "This has finally given me the chance to reconnect."

Schuhmacher, a graduate of The Last Mile, turned to physical fitness to pull himself out of an addiction to drinking and drugs that sent his life into a downward spiral. He came up with the idea for an online coaching service called Fitness Monkey to help others find recovery through fitness. Now through Code.7370, he has begun building a website for it.

"Computer programming is something that I can see myself doing after prison," he said. "If I can get those skills now, it will prepare me to get out of prison and stay out of prison."