An American Family: Living on the Verge

Uneasy calm: Luis and Francis face a world of surprises.

At 10 a.m., after he is processed out of Chino, Luis is given $200 “gate money” to get him started. As he makes his final exit, prisoners in a nearby yard yell out the usual salutations: “Stay out, man. This ain’t the place.” By 11 a.m., the lumbering, fog-colored bus, known as the gray goose, has dropped Luis and 14 others at the nearest Metrolink, where he tries unsuccessfully to get change to buy the necessary ticket to Union Station. Finally, he gives up and stuffs a $10 bill into the ticket machine, although it means losing five of it. Hours later, he reaches downtown L.A., then boards the blue No. 68 bus that lets him out at César Chávez Avenue, a block from Francis, the kids and home.

During the next few days Luis is too spooked to leave the house much. “I felt really paranoid,” he says later. “I kept thinking the police might try to get me and send me back.” His concern was not without foundation. When Luis was first paroled in December of 2000 after having served his original seven-year sentence, he had every intention of staying out for good. But in the two-plus years since, he’s been back to prison twice on parole violations, neither of which involved the commission of a crime. The two additional terms — one for nine months, the second and most recent, another 10 months — were for “gang association,” meaning the police had spotted Luis with someone who was currently or once used to be a gang member, categories that cover the majority of the people Luis knows, including Francis.

In this matter, Luis matches an unfortunate California norm. In 2002, of the 136,000 felons on parole, 85,500 returned to prison (far and away the highest recidivism rate in the nation). Even more incredibly, at least four out of five of those returning state guests went back, not for new crimes, but for technical violations of their parole. Like Luis.

Eventually, he does venture out since he needs to find a job — bringing him up against still more dispiriting statistics. Nationally, 65 percent of all employers say straight out they won’t hire somebody with a record. (A similar percentage of landlords state they won’t rent to a parolee.) Of the other 35 percent who profess to be willing, most simply put guys like Luis at the bottom of any given list. Yet, he thinks he might have a leg up on the employment issue. The other times Luis was out, he worked for a company that does cleaning and maintenance for the McDonald’s playground structures. The owner professed to like Luis’ work and said there’d be a position waiting for him on his release. But when the owner doesn’t return calls, Luis decides things must have changed. He spends several more weeks filling out applications, none of which elicit a reply.

No income and no job leave Luis feeling high-strung and jittery, plagued in his lowest moments by the dread that he’ll slip back into earning money the old way. His state of mind isn’t helped by some unsettling new encounters with the police. It seems that in the months before Luis’ release, several officers from Hollenbeck Division had taken to cruising by at 5 in the morning and shining the light from the patrol car into Francis’ bedroom window. Other times, late at night, they’d park for extended times across the street from the house and simply watch. One officer was the most persistent. Furious, Francis began documenting his visits with a video camera, then drove to Hollenbeck and filed a complaint. When the cop didn’t back off, she filed a second complaint, then a third.

Now that Luis is out, matters have, if anything, escalated. “This one officer keeps saying, ‘Tell your wife to get those complaints off me,’” says Luis. “‘I know where to go to if she keeps on pushing the issue. But if you solve my problem, maybe I can solve yours.’” He shakes his head. “It makes you feel like nothing will ever work, that even if you do good it won’t matter.” Luis feels sure the police still have him listed as a shot caller for the Tiny Boys. “And, the truth is, I used to have that kind of influence,” he says. “That’s not my life anymore. But they don’t believe it. They still see me as a bad person.” A conversation with several Hollenbeck officers suggests that Luis’ view of the cops’ perception is dead-bang accurate.

After one more week with no progress on the employment front, Luis decides to try another strategy. Francis works as a receptionist for Homeboy Industries, the gang-intervention program run by Father Greg Boyle. Luis knows Boyle from past years, but hasn’t wanted to ask him for help. Yet now he feels he is running out of options. “I really need a job,” he tells the priest. “Any job. I need to be busy. Otherwise I feel too . . . I don’t know. . . desperate.”