From Prison Yard to College Campus

A Graduation That Tells a Larger Story

Arthur Monarque’s graduation story is not just a personal achievement. It is a public safety lesson.

Monarque recently earned his bachelor’s degree in communication from Cal Poly Humboldt after beginning his college work while incarcerated at Pelican Bay State Prison. He had served 10 years. He was released in October 2025. Now he is preparing to pursue a master’s degree at Wake Forest University, with a teaching assistantship that covers tuition.

That is a long way from the path he once imagined for himself.

In a May 25, 2026, Press Democrat article, Monarque describes growing up around gang culture and not caring much about school when he was younger. But inside prison, he found education. More importantly, he found possibility.

“Education is the word,” he said. “Education is the opportunity, and it creates many doors.”

That sentence should stay with us.

We often ask whether people coming out of prison are ready to return to society. We should also ask whether society is ready to build the pathways that make a successful return possible.

Accountability and Transformation Can Coexist

I have spent much of my adult life in public safety, first as a police officer and later as a police lieutenant, mayor, council member, and community violence prevention professional.

I have seen the harm caused by violence. I have stood with victims and families whose lives were permanently changed. I have also seen young people and adults who made terrible decisions, caused real harm, and later struggled to find a meaningful path back.

Both truths can exist at the same time.

Accountability matters.

So does the possibility of transformation.

The Cal Poly Humboldt program at Pelican Bay is one example of what that possibility can look like when taken seriously. The program offers a Bachelor of Arts in Communication to students who have already completed an associate degree. It began in spring 2024 and provides face-to-face instruction inside Pelican Bay. Cal Poly Humboldt describes it as one of the first bachelor’s programs taught in person in a high-security California prison.

The program also became the first in the nation to be approved for Pell Grant eligibility under the new federal policy restoring access to Pell Grants for incarcerated students. That is not a minor administrative detail. It is part of a broader national shift toward recognizing that education inside prison can be a bridge to safer communities outside prison.

Dr. Maxwell Schnurer, who coordinates the Pelican Bay program, said the students receive the same curriculum as on the Arcata campus. He described students as deeply engaged, intellectually curious, and committed to learning despite the daily realities of prison life.

That matters because public safety is not only about what happens at the front end of the system. It is also about what happens after arrest, prosecution, incarceration, and release.

The Revolving Door Is Not Inevitable

When people leave prison with no realistic options, the odds are stacked against them.

They return to old neighborhoods, old pressures, and old survival patterns. They face stigma, housing barriers, employment barriers, technology gaps, and sometimes years of disconnection from family and community life.

Then we act surprised when the revolving door keeps spinning.

Education does not solve all of that. But it can interrupt the cycle.

Research supports this. RAND found that people who participated in correctional education programs had 43% lower odds of returning to prison than those who did not. RAND also found that every dollar spent on prison education saves four to five dollars in reincarceration costs.

That is not soft-on-crime thinking.

That is smart-on-safety thinking.

California Is Building a Pathway

California is becoming a national leader in this work.

The California Community Colleges’ Rising Scholars Network supports currently and formerly incarcerated students across the state. A 2025 report from the Chancellor’s Office says the network has grown into the largest higher education-in-prison infrastructure in the nation and serves more than 31,000 students.

The California State University system also has Project Rebound, which supports formerly incarcerated students as they enter, remain in, and graduate from CSU campuses. The CSU describes Project Rebound as a program that supports higher education and successful reintegration for formerly incarcerated individuals.

This work is now local.

Project Rebound at Sonoma State University supports formerly incarcerated and justice-impacted students who want to enroll and succeed at SSU. The university describes the program as a way to create an alternative to the revolving door of mass incarceration while increasing community strength and safety.

The program launched at Sonoma State in fall 2025, according to the Sonoma State Star, and provides mentorship, financial support, community, and a sense of belonging.

That local connection is important.

A Missing Piece in Violence Prevention

Project Rebound also complements the work of Santa Rosa’s Violence Prevention Partnership.

The VPP was built on a simple yet powerful understanding: Violence cannot be reduced by a single agency, a single strategy, or a single moment of intervention. It requires a coordinated approach that balances prevention, intervention, enforcement, and reentry.

That balance matters.

Prevention helps young people build the skills, relationships, and opportunities that reduce the likelihood of violence before it happens. Intervention reaches those at highest risk before their lives are further defined by violence, trauma, or incarceration. Enforcement is necessary when people harm others and must be held accountable. Reentry helps people come home with structure, support, and a path toward stability.

For years, Santa Rosa has tried to hold those pieces together. The city describes the VPP as an effort to lead, mobilize, and align resources so youth and community members can be safe, healthy, and able to thrive.

Project Rebound strengthens that framework by giving real substance to the reentry aspect of the work. It provides a pathway for people returning from incarceration to pursue higher education, build a new identity, connect with positive mentors, and become contributors to the community.

That is why Project Rebound’s inclusion in the VPP is so important.

It tells the community that reentry is not separate from violence prevention. It is violence prevention.

When someone returns home from prison to find only locked doors, we should not be surprised when old patterns pull them back. But when that same person finds a college classroom, a mentor, a support network, and a reason to imagine a different future, the public safety equation changes.

From SRJC to Sonoma State

Sonoma County also has another important piece of this pathway: the Second Chance Club at Santa Rosa Junior College.

SRJC’s Rising Scholars program provides educational opportunities and support services to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students. Its IGNITE program serves as a pipeline from incarceration to college, while Second Chance continues support when students are released and ready to continue their educational journey.

The Second Chance Club is a support community for formerly incarcerated students who have been in jail or prison. SRJC describes it as a judgment-free space where students can find belonging, build community, and pursue education as a pathway to breaking the cycle of recidivism.

That matters because not every student will begin at a four-year university.

For many, the journey starts at the junior college level. It starts with someone helping them fill out a form. It starts with a weekly meeting. It starts with walking onto a campus and, perhaps for the first time in years, feeling that they belong somewhere other than the system that once confined them.

The connection between SRJC’s Second Chance Club and SSU’s Project Rebound creates a local educational bridge. It gives formerly incarcerated students a path from reentry to community college, from community college to a bachelor’s degree, and from survival to contribution.

That is exactly the kind of pathway a comprehensive violence prevention strategy should support.

A Community Issue, Not Just a Campus Issue

As a member of the Sonoma State University Foundation Board of Directors, I see higher education as more than a campus issue. It is a community issue.

A strong university helps build a stronger region. It prepares teachers, nurses, social workers, business leaders, public servants, and community advocates.

Programs like Project Rebound add another layer to that mission. They remind us that talent is not limited to those whose lives followed a clean, straight line.

Sometimes talent is buried beneath trauma, poverty, addiction, violence, incarceration, and shame.

The question is whether we are willing to help uncover it.

That does not mean ignoring harm. It does not mean pretending every person is ready to change. And it certainly does not mean asking victims to carry the burden of someone else’s redemption.

But it does mean understanding that public safety requires more than punishment.

For decades, communities have invested in police, probation, courts, and jails. Those systems are necessary. But they are not enough.

If we want safer neighborhoods, we also need to invest in prevention, intervention, healing, and reentry.

That has been the core of comprehensive violence prevention work for years. We cannot arrest our way out of violence. We cannot incarcerate our way into healthy neighborhoods. And we cannot build lasting public safety unless we create credible pathways for people to change.

Education Gives Accountability a Destination

Arthur Monarque’s story gives us a human face for that truth.

He is not asking us to forget where he came from. He is showing us where education helped him go.

From gang life to prison.

From prison to college.

From college to graduate school.

From someone once written off to someone preparing to teach others.

That kind of transformation does not happen by accident. It happens when personal responsibility meets opportunity.

It happens when educators walk into prison yards. It happens when community colleges offer a first step. It happens when universities build support systems. It happens when violence prevention partnerships recognize that reentry is not an afterthought.

It is part of the work.

It is our shared responsibility.

Why This Matters Today

The larger principle at stake is whether we believe public safety should only punish past harm or also prevent future harm.

If we ignore programs like Project Rebound, Rising Scholars, the Second Chance Club, and the Pelican Bay bachelor’s degree program, we risk leaving too many people without a bridge back into community life. That failure has consequences. It affects families, neighborhoods, victims, employers, schools, and the public systems that absorb the cost of people returning to prison.

But when education becomes part of reentry, accountability has a clear purpose. People can return with structure, purpose and a chance to contribute.

That does not excuse the past.

It helps protect the future.

For Sonoma County, the question is not whether everyone will take that opportunity. Some will not. The real question is whether we are willing to support the pathways that give transformation a fighting chance.

That is why Project Rebound belongs in the Violence Prevention Partnership. It completes the circle. Prevention, intervention, enforcement, and reentry are not competing ideas. They are interconnected responsibilities.

Because safer communities are not built solely by locking doors.

They are also built by opening the right ones.