The pinnacle experience for many UC Berkeley undergraduate students is the spring commencement ceremony. Wearing their cap and gowns, thousands crowd California Memorial Stadium, the Golden Bears’ historic home, to mark the beginning of a new chapter.
One Cal senior, Javier, knows he may miss this rite of passage and has prepared for a quieter triumph as the new fall semester gets underway this month. The 22-year-old sociology major, who plans to attend law school, is enrolled at UC Berkeley from Alameda County’s Juvenile Hall in San Leandro.
He has never set foot on campus.
“Although my body is physically confined, I keep my mind free by learning and educating myself and continuing to grow,” said Javier, who asked to be identified by his middle name on his lawyer’s advice, citing potential educational and legal repercussions, under KQED’s anonymous sources policy.
Javier, who awaits trial for an alleged violent crime, is expected to become California’s first incarcerated young person to graduate from a UC school after transferring from community college. His achievement is possible through a partnership between the Alameda County Office of Education and Incarceration to College, an outreach program for in-custody and out-of-custody youth.
The program, founded by a formerly incarcerated scholar and UC Berkeley graduate, provides college readiness courses, tutoring and coaching to incarcerated students in juvenile halls in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties. Participants can be up to 25, the maximum age for a youth life sentence.
Incarceration to College, launched in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and grounded in cultural affirmation, has served more than 1,000 students across three counties. Last year, the program had 65 students enrolled in college while living at Bay Area juvenile halls, including eight at UC schools. This year, another incarcerated youth became the first to gain direct admission to a four-year California State University program.
“We don’t see them as people who are felons or have a record and now automatically need to go into the trades,” founder Shani Shay said. “Or now automatically should be looking at a job that doesn’t even align with some of the risks that they are willing to take to get out of poverty.”
That struggle marked Javier’s own childhood. He grew up in a Mexican immigrant household in Hayward with nearly a dozen family members, including his mother, siblings and other relatives.
He said he was heavily influenced by the gang culture of his uncles and his neighborhood. By 13, he landed in juvenile hall for assault and armed robbery, he said.
“People knew what school I went to and who I involved myself with. So I didn’t really want to go to school,” he said.
At 15, he said, he and his friends survived a shooting. Shortly after, in ninth grade, he dropped out. He said he felt dismissed by teachers who routinely sent him to the principal’s office for what he described as small infractions.
At 17, Javier returned to juvenile hall. There, older friends from the neighborhood who were also incarcerated encouraged him to finish high school. At first, he was discouraged because he had only about a year’s worth of credits, he said.
“I was like, damn…I am pretty much nowhere. So that kind of made me feel ashamed,” he said.
But surrounded by peers with similar experiences, classes began to feel different, Javier said. He began to feel a sense of belonging and support.
“I went from being quiet to being the main person answering all the questions on the whiteboard, being the first one to raise his hand,” he said.
In 2021, Javier graduated from high school and enrolled in online classes at Laney College in Oakland, with support from Incarceration to College. He excelled, lobbied to take a full-time course load and even cross-enrolled in a UC Berkeley class. As a junior, he transferred to Cal full-time.
“He shone. He was an A+ student,” said Victoria Robinson, a senior lecturer in ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. “He’s thirsty for education. You can’t give him enough material…to the point where the syllabus wasn’t enough. He just wants to keep learning.”
In a transformative move, Robinson flipped the classroom dynamic. Instead of Javier joining remotely, she brought the classroom to him — teaching from inside the juvenile hall while students tuned in via Zoom. Some students also went to Javier’s facility to attend class.
“It had a profound impact on UC Berkeley students,” Robinson said. At first, they had questions, but ultimately, they fully supported the arrangement. It also buoyed Jaiver, who said he sometimes faced pushback from juvenile hall staff questioning whether he was really receiving a UC Berkeley education.
Javier’s trajectory is uncommon, especially given the disparity in college achievement for formerly incarcerated adults. A 2018 study by the Prison Policy Initiative found 4% of formerly incarcerated people held a college degree, compared to 29% of the U.S. population. The report cited barriers, including financial aid eligibility and discriminatory admissions practices. Those who complete a degree beyond high school may face licensing restrictions for certain careers.
The success of students like Javier has already made a cultural shift in Alameda County’s Juvenile Hall, with more students eager to pursue higher education, said Lucia Moritz, executive director of student programs at the Alameda County Office of Education.
“[Javier] mentors other students,” Moritz said. “There’s been a lot of youth who will say, like, he’s the one who motivated me to step up my work.”
As graduation nears, Javier wants to attend law school because of his familiarity with the juvenile justice system. He has faced legal limbo for years over whether he should be tried as an adult for a violent crime he is accused of committing when he was a minor.
Despite that uncertainty and the challenges of incarceration, he said education has given him a sanctuary.
“I don’t let these walls trap me in,” he said.