Reentry infrastructure for justice-impacted scholars.

The persistence gap (the “drop-off” point)

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: educational access is expanding faster than the supports that make persistence possible after release. When someone leaves custody with credits or a degree, the next 90 days often determine whether that progress turns into mobility—or collapses.

This is not a motivation problem. It’s an infrastructure problem. People returning home face overlapping systems at once: housing searches, parole/probation obligations, employment pressure, family reunification, healthcare needs, and campus bureaucracy (financial aid verification, residency, transcripts, holds, missing IDs).

Many reentry programs do critical work, but few are intentionally built around reentry-to-college persistence: supporting scholars to stay enrolled, transfer, and complete degrees while stabilizing housing and income. That is the gap JSEI was created to fill.

What makes JSEI different

Campus-based programs are essential—Project Rebound (CSU), Underground Scholars (UC), and Rising Scholars (community colleges) have helped build a visible pathway into higher education. JSEI complements them by operating as a community-based layer that supports students across campuses and across life transitions.

• Cross-institution support: community college → CSU/UC transfer → persistence → degree completion.
• Reentry stabilization planning: housing navigation, documentation, benefits, and barrier removal.
• Education-first workforce strategy: employment planning that protects long-term mobility.
• High-accountability follow-through: not just referrals—active coordination until the barrier is resolved.

JSEI is built to be a “throughline”—so the support doesn’t disappear when a scholar changes campuses, counties, or circumstances.

Who we serve

Justice-impacted scholars: people returning from jail or prison, people on probation/parole, and system-impacted adults pursuing community college, transfer, university enrollment, or workforce training.

• Returning students rebuilding continuity after release
• Transfer students navigating cross-campus systems
• Students facing housing instability or urgent basic needs
• Scholars seeking education-aligned employment pathways

What this map is really telling you

At first glance, this map looks like progress—and it is. Dots across California represent something that was not supposed to be possible: people building academic lives inside prisons, and carrying that momentum into community college, CSU, and UC classrooms after release. Credits are being earned. Degrees are being completed. Scholars are showing up anyway—through lockdowns, transfers, disrupted mail, missing paperwork, limited internet access, and every structural barrier designed to make persistence unlikely.

But the map also reveals something else, quieter and more dangerous: the system is expanding educational access faster than it is building the infrastructure needed to make education stick after release.

Most people assume the hard part is getting admitted. The hard part is not admission. The hard part is reentry. Reentry is where time collapses. In a matter of weeks, a returning student is expected to secure housing, restart a life, meet supervision requirements, reconnect with family, find income, navigate healthcare, and solve bureaucratic problems that stall enrollment: IDs, transcripts, holds, residency verification, financial aid verification, missing documentation, missed deadlines. Meanwhile, school starts whether you’re ready or not.

When those pressures hit at once, “a student” stops being a category. They become a person sleeping on someone’s couch, borrowing a phone, trying to register for classes while waiting for paperwork, trying to keep a job while meeting probation obligations, trying to stay steady while the world demands speed. That is the transition zone where academic momentum is most often lost—not because people aren’t capable, but because the conditions required for persistence are treated as optional.

Here’s where the mismatch becomes obvious. Traditional reentry programming was built around a default picture of who “reentry clients” are: people with low educational attainment who need immediate placement into any available job, often in low-skill or low-wage work. Many programs do critical stabilization work and deserve respect for it. But that model becomes incomplete—sometimes even harmful—when applied to scholars who are pursuing education for a reason: to build a different future.

Scholars are not going back to school as a hobby. They are doing it because they want mobility—better work, higher wages, stability, a profession they can be proud of, and a life where survival is not the full-time job. But when the only reentry pathway offered is “take whatever job you can get right now,” education becomes fragile. Coursework gets dropped. Transfer timelines get derailed. People are pulled into work that consumes the time and energy needed to finish the very credential that could change their trajectory. In that moment, reentry systems accidentally recreate what incarceration already did: limit possibility.

Campus-based programs like Rising Scholars, Underground Scholars, and Project Rebound are essential parts of the solution. They open doors, build community, and provide culturally competent support to justice-impacted students while they pursue higher education. But campuses have real structural limits. Their support is often constrained by institutional scope, campus policy, staffing capacity, and funding frameworks that treat “need” as something financial aid can measure—rather than what reentry actually looks like in real life.

Reentry is not constrained to FAFSA availability. Students can be technically “enrolled” and still be in crisis. Housing instability doesn’t disappear because a student has a class schedule. Transportation barriers don’t dissolve because someone has a GPA. Parole and probation conditions don’t pause for midterms. Documentation delays don’t care about registration dates. And career opportunity does not automatically follow a degree when stigma, background checks, and weak professional networks remain intact.

That is why JSEI exists.

JSEI is built to be the missing layer between systems—the community-based infrastructure that follows justice-impacted scholars across transitions: custody to community, community college to university, enrollment to employment. We don’t replace campus programs—we extend what they start. We focus on the high-risk, high-friction part of the pathway where progress is most often lost, and we do the unglamorous work that makes persistence possible: coordination, barrier removal, continuity planning, and education-aligned workforce pathways.

• Continuity across transitions: support that doesn’t disappear when a scholar changes campuses, counties, or circumstances.
• Stability-first persistence: housing navigation, documentation support, and barrier removal so education can continue.
• Education-aligned careers: professional development and job pathways that match skills—not just “any job.”
• High-accountability follow-through: not a list of referrals—coordination until the barrier is resolved.

The point of education is mobility. The point of reentry support should be to protect that mobility. JSEI exists because justice-impacted scholars deserve a system designed for who they actually are now: students, workers-in-training, and future professionals building something better after release.

This map shows where programs exist. JSEI exists for what happens next.

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