L&R PRESS | TECHNOLOGY, PUBLIC SAFETY & SOCIAL IMPACT

ReConnect Is Betting That Reentry Can Become a Real-Time Mission

L&R Press has been selected to oversee the ReConnect Reentry Support Services platform ahead of its planned 2027 launch.

L&R Press has been selected to oversee the ReConnect Reentry Support Services platform ahead of its planned 2027 launch, an effort to use artificial intelligence, human support and better coordination to help Californians successfully rebuild their lives after incarceration. One of the platform’s prominent features will be connecting users with the job training, skills development and support needed to secure permanent employment in a career of their choice.

L&R Press | Technology, Public Safety & Social Impact

For decades, America's criminal justice system has invested enormous resources in determining where someone is, whether conditions of supervision are being followed, and what happens when those conditions are violated.

It has been considerably harder to answer another question:

What does this person need today to make it less likely that they return to the criminal justice system tomorrow?

That distinction sits at the center of a new initiative L&R Press has been selected to oversee.

ReConnect Reentry Support Services is preparing for a planned 2027 launch beginning in the San Francisco Bay Area. The platform is being developed as a technology-enabled support and coordination system for people returning to society after incarceration, including individuals navigating probation or parole.

Its ambition is substantial: use artificial intelligence, mobile technology and real-time support to help turn reentry from a periodic compliance exercise into a continuously supported mission toward stability, employment, housing, treatment, family connection and ultimately independence.

But there is an important distinction.

California Already Has Digital Reentry Infrastructure

ReConnect Reentry Support Services will not enter an empty technological landscape.

CDCR already operates the Automated Reentry Management System, or ARMS, a centralized web-based platform that tracks rehabilitative treatment, case planning, program referrals and outcomes. CDCR says ARMS helps staff and contracted providers understand relationships between services and outcomes and evaluate whether programs advance goals including public safety and reduced recidivism.

San Francisco's Reentry Council has likewise digitized resource navigation through its Getting Out & Staying Out initiative, connecting formerly incarcerated people, families, service providers, corrections personnel, attorneys and supervision officers to current reentry resources.

Those systems demonstrate something important.

California already recognizes that reentry requires better information and better technology.

The next frontier may be making that information personal, conversational and actionable in real time. ReConnect Reentry Support Services is intended to operate at that frontier.

California Already Knows What Rehabilitative Measures Work. Now We Need to Scale Them.

There is some genuinely good news here.

California already has evidence that rehabilitation works. ReConnect Reentry Support Services is not being designed to replace probation officers, parole agents, judges, treatment professionals or human judgment. California already uses risk-based supervision, intensive reentry services and, for some populations, electronic monitoring.

The opportunity for ReConnect Reentry Support Services is different and L&R Press hopes to shift probation and parole from monitoring compliance alone toward continuously supporting success.

CDCR reported in August 2026 that more than 66% of people in its latest release cohort remained conviction-free. The numbers become even more interesting when you look at people who successfully participated in therapeutic, educational, vocational, and self-development programs.

Participants earning Rehabilitation Achievement Credits achieved an 81.5% success rate. Participants in Specialized Treatment for Optimized Programming reached 82.5%.

Community reentry programs show a similar pattern. CDCR found a three-year recidivism rate of 26.5% among Male Community Reentry Program participants and just 18.3% among Female Community Reentry Program participants, compared with 39.1% for the overall cohort studied.

That's a pretty important signal.

Support works.

Education works. Treatment works. Job preparation works. Structured reentry works.

So perhaps we don't need to spend another decade debating whether people returning from incarceration benefit from support.

We should be asking a more practical question:

How do we give people more of what works, exactly when they need it?

Because reentry doesn't happen once a week during an appointment.

It happens at 7:30 Monday morning when someone's bus doesn't arrive and they have a job interview at 8:00.

It happens when a landlord asks for a document they don't have.

It happens when someone needs treatment but doesn't know which provider will accept them.

It happens when a person gets their first paycheck and needs help opening a bank account.

These are small problems until they aren't.

Governor Gavin Newsom has increasingly described rehabilitation as part of public safety rather than something competing with it. California's investments at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center reflect that philosophy.

The Learning Center video below demonstrates how California is already translating its rehabilitation philosophy into physical spaces for education, workforce preparation and technology training.

San Quentin Learning Center: education, workforce preparation, technology and reentry infrastructure.

Today, employment readiness means more than learning a trade or preparing a résumé. Applying for a job happens online. Employers communicate through apps. Work schedules arrive on smartphones. Banking, transportation, healthcare, government benefits, education, housing applications, and professional networking increasingly require basic digital fluency.

This is why rehabilitation must prepare people for the economy they are actually returning to.

Someone returning home after years of incarceration may be entering a society that communicates and conducts business very differently from the one they left. Handing that person a smartphone without helping them understand how to use modern technology productively can leave them technically connected while still functionally disconnected.

Reentry should therefore include digital reintegration.

People on probation and parole should have opportunities to become comfortable using smartphones, workplace applications, online banking, digital calendars, video meetings, AI tools, job platforms, and other technologies that millions of Americans now use without thinking twice about them.

This is another opportunity for ReConnect Reentry Support Services.

The smartphone should not simply become another mechanism through which the criminal justice system can reach someone. It WILL BE the tool that reconnects them to society.

A tool for finding work. Learning new skills. Managing appointments. Communicating with family. Navigating transportation. Finding housing. Accessing services. Building financial stability. And increasingly, learning how to work alongside artificial intelligence.

If the objective of rehabilitation is successful reintegration, then preparing people to participate confidently in a technology-driven economy should no longer be considered optional.

We shouldn't release people into the modern world and expect them to figure out the modern world alone.

Governor Gavin Newsom discusses California’s rehabilitation and public-safety transformation at San Quentin.

ReConnect Reentry Support Services will Focus on Employment. One Of The Strongest Forms Of Reentry Support.

California has already begun demonstrating what happens when technology, job preparation and reentry are treated as one mission.

Through CALPIA's Entry to Employment network, people approaching release can learn how to navigate modern job-search technology, build professional résumés, identify second-chance employers and, in some cases, secure employment before returning home.

CALPIA Assistant General Manager Rusty Bechtold summarized the philosophy simply: “It all starts with a meaningful job.”

A job provides more than income. It creates routine. Transportation becomes purposeful. A bank account becomes necessary. Digital communication becomes part of everyday life. Professional relationships begin replacing institutional ones.

But getting the job is only half the mission.

Keeping it is where real-time support becomes powerful.

The person who receives a job offer on Friday may discover Sunday night that they need work boots, identification, direct deposit, transportation, childcare or a smartphone app before reporting Monday morning.

Traditional reentry services may have successfully helped that person become employable. ReConnect Reentry Support Services can help close the final mile between “I got the opportunity” and “I successfully showed up.”

Getting The Job Is One Mission. Keeping It Is Another.

Imagine someone returning home after five years of incarceration.

They do everything right. They complete training. Build a résumé. Interview. Get hired.

Monday is their first day.

Sunday night, the employer sends instructions through an app they have never used. They need to upload identification. Set up direct deposit. Download a scheduling application. Confirm their shift electronically. Figure out which bus gets them there by 6:45 a.m.

None of these problems is particularly difficult for someone who has spent the last decade living inside the digital economy.

For someone who has spent years away from it, they can become enormous.

ReConnect Reentry Support Services is being designed for that gap.

The user should be able to say: “I start work tomorrow and I don't understand this app.”

Or: “My shift changed and now the bus doesn't run.”

Or: “I got my first paycheck. How do I set up a bank account?”

Or: “My supervisor wants me to join a video meeting tomorrow. I've never used the software.”

These are not glamorous interventions.

They may be exactly the interventions that keep someone employed.

Technology Can Help Make Capability Visible

California's Career Passport pilot points toward another important idea: workers should increasingly be evaluated according to the skills, credentials, experience and learning they possess, not simply whether they followed a conventional educational path.

That philosophy may be especially consequential for people returning from incarceration.

Someone may come home with vocational training, certifications, college coursework, work experience earned while incarcerated and extraordinary personal growth, yet still confront an employment system that sees the conviction before the capability.

Technology can help make capability visible.

Over time, ReConnect Reentry Support Services will help users organize employment credentials, training milestones, certifications, résumé information, skills and career goals into a living employment profile that evolves as they rebuild their careers.

AI Will Recommend. Humans Will Decide.

Artificial intelligence introduces extraordinary possibilities here. It also introduces serious risks.

An AI model should not independently determine that someone violated parole. It should not recommend incarceration based on opaque predictions. It should not secretly monitor private communications. And it should not confuse incomplete data with wrongdoing.

ReConnect Reentry Support Services's value proposition is built around a simple principle: AI can research, recognize patterns, organize information and suggest possible next steps. Human professionals remain responsible for consequential decisions.

The purpose is not to watch people more closely.

It is to help people trying to rebuild their lives avoid navigating every obstacle alone.

California Can Set A New Standard For The Nation

ReConnect Reentry Support Services's ambition is larger than another reentry application.

California already knows many of the ingredients of successful reentry: education, employment, treatment, housing, digital fluency, relationships and structured support.

ReConnect Reentry Support Services's innovation is making those ingredients available as a continuously coordinated mission after someone comes home.

That is how California can help revolutionize reentry: not by replacing the professionals already doing the work, but by giving them and the people they serve a better system for staying connected between appointments, programs and agencies.

If the model works, it could change rehabilitation procedures for the long term and help California set a new standard for the nation around technology-enabled, human-centered reentry.

ABC7 News Bay Area reports on the original plan to transform San Quentin around education, training and rehabilitation.

Our responsibility will extend beyond software.

Goals become missions. Barriers trigger research. Approved information creates recommendations. Human professionals review consequential recommendations. Progress changes the mission. The system learns what is working. The individual remains at the center.

A person returning from incarceration should not become a collection of compliance fields.

They are rebuilding a life.

The technology should reflect that.

Technology companies frequently measure success through engagement: daily active users, sessions, retention and time in application.

Those are useful product metrics. They are not the ultimate ReConnect Reentry Support Services metrics.

Success should look more like stable housing, employment retained, treatment completed, education started, appointments kept, family relationships strengthened, benefits obtained, fewer technical violations, fewer new convictions, reduced return to custody and successful completion of supervision.

Ultimately, success means the person no longer needs ReConnect Reentry Support Services.

The Revolution Is Supporting Success In Real Time

California has spent decades building technology capable of telling the criminal justice system when someone has done something wrong.

ReConnect Reentry Support Services asks whether we can build equally sophisticated technology to help someone keep doing things right.

Find the job.

Make the appointment.

Learn the technology.

Keep the housing.

Rebuild the relationship.

Ask for help before the problem becomes a violation.

And eventually reach the point where neither ReConnect Reentry Support Services nor the criminal justice system is needed anymore.

That is what successful reentry should look like.