UCLA Luskin Social Welfare student Francisco Villarruel grew up during a tough-on-crime era in California, was incarcerated as a teen, but emerged to find community-based reentry programs that helped him get back on his feet. Now, he is watching with dismay as the state rolls back criminal justice reforms that he believes have led to healthier, safer communities.

In a letter to the editor published by the Washington Post, Villarruel shares his experiences as an Angeleno who spent half his life behind bars, then found rehabilitative services that have helped him to thrive, eventually leading to graduate school at UCLA.

“Community-based reentry programs have an impressive success rate, reducing rearrest and reconviction rates for participants, and doing so more cheaply than simply keeping people in jail,” Villarruel writes. “California’s Proposition 36, which passed last month, will reduce available funding both for these sorts of supportive programs and for victims’ services.”

The result, he says, is that “more kids will be repeatedly caged for huge portions of their lives and released without the support of programs that help people turn their lives around.”

Villarruel was urged to write the letter as an extra-credit assignment in UCLA Luskin’s “Foundations of Social Welfare Policy” class taught by Assistant Professor Sicong (Summer) Sun.

“Francisco draws on his lived experiences and empirical evidence to engage in a timely discussion of criminal justice policy, specifically addressing the recent passage of California’s Proposition 36,” which stiffens penalties for drug and theft crimes, said Sun, who joined the Social Welfare faculty this year.