The Delancey Street Foundation opened an inmate-run restaurant serving a variety of food inside a CA state prison. It helps workers ‘feel human again.’
Inmates work in the Delancey Street Restaurant kitchen at the California State Prison Solano in Vacaville on July 24, 2024."We actually built this restaurant," said Ray Williams, Jr., front right."We started with hard hats and elevated to smocks." Photo by Florence Middleton, CalMattersThe venture, launched by a venerable San Francisco foundation, counts former Governor Jerry Brown and current Governor Gavin Newsom among its supporters.
First: The Delancey Street Restaurant, a dining area and work-training program for inmates, at the California State Prison. Last: Cristin Smith, 35, works in the Delancey Street Restaurant kitchen with other inmates at the California State Prison, Solano in Vacaville on July 24, 2024. Photos by Florence Middleton, CalMatters
Nearby, Justin Miller, who is Latino and has been in an out of institutions on drug charges since he was 13 and has tattoos climbing up his neck, stood with Ray Williams Jr., a Black inmate who has spent 24 of his 43 years in prison for first degree murder, as they bantered and managed the kitchen. The engine of all things Delancey Street is Mimi Silbert, the diminutive 82-year-old co-founder and chief executive with a Ph.D. in criminology from the University of California, Berkeley. She works with sentencing judges and people who have hit bottom. Candidates commit to two years of tough commitments, learning how to live a crime-free, drug-free life. They learn vocational, academic and social skills.
“The human is crushed by excessive institutionalization,” Brown said in a phone interview from his ranch in rural Northern California. “Mimi gives inmates their personhood,” he said. Mimi Silbert, president and CEO of the Delancey Street Foundation, at the Delancey Street Restaurant in San Francisco on July 17, 2024. Photo by Florence Middleton, CalMatter
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