The Prison Coding Class That Might Have Inmates Making Six Figures On Their Release
Like everyone else in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jason Jones has an idea for a new app. Called "In Touch," the app would automatically upload information about a student's schoolwork, so that busy parents can make sure that their kids aren't flunking. Jones has a personal stake in this. He has three kids himself, and says his parents never cared whether he paid attention at school. "As a result, I was able to cheat my way through high school and college," he explains.
Jones is going through a coding bootcamp, so he will soon have the skills necessary to start working on his app. But the 31-year-old has never actually used a smartphone, and his Internet experience is limited to casual web browsing. He's an inmate at California's San Quentin State Prison—incarcerated since 2006 for assault—who is participating in Code 7370, a six-month intensive computer programming class developed by The Last Mile, a nonprofit program that offers entrepreneurship training for inmates.
Once Jones and his fellow students graduate, they'll have the opportunity to take real projects from clients. That way, when they're released from prison, they'll already have portfolios. Theoretically, they should be able to get work that pays in the six figure range.
I recently visited San Quentin to see the Code 7370 initiative in action. Walking through the gates of the prison, my first thought was that the landscaping of San Quentin made it look more like a slightly down-on-its-luck college campus than a place housing death row. My visit to the Code 7370 classroom—a formerly decrepit space that was once used as a printing shop—reinforced that initial impression. The well-lit space is filled with refurbished computers that were previously used by state employees.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3038589/the-prison-coding-class-that-might-have-inmates-making-six-figures-on-their-release
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