Jim Wunderman Joins Mark Zuckerberg on San Quentin Tour

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan this week (Oct. 13) invited Bay Area Council CEO Jim Wunderman in a small group to tour of San Quentin Prison to learn about the human, social and economic impacts of the nation’s criminal justice system.

In California, the state spends almost 10 percent of its general fund budget on prisons and corrections. The $60,000 that figure represents per inmate is almost five times the amount California budgets per student for K-12 education. On top of that, increasingly aggressive sentencing guidelines have led to massive overcrowding in the state’s prisons. And of the 112,300 inmates incarcerated in California prisons, 42 percent are Latino and 29 percent are African American – disproportionately than their share of the overall population.

Zuckerberg’s interest in the topic was inspired by a study this year – The New Jim Crow – that looked at how the US justice system disproportionately criminalizes and jails Blacks and Latinos. He talked about the imperative for focusing greater attention on this issue and working to make our criminal justice system fairer and more effective.

The Bay Area Council would like to thank Darshan Singh and the California Prison Industry Authority for hosting the tour.