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(Val Zavala) One of California's most expensive programs,
is our prison system.
It's the largest in the country, with 160,000 inmates.
For them, hard time often leads to more hard time.
Since almost three out of four inmates released, end up right back in the slammer.
Our story, Con Divers, is about a little known program
that could give hardened criminals a reason to stay straight.
The secret? Add a little water to a whole lot of toughness.
Correspondent Michael Okwu reports.
[slow instrumental music]
(Okwu) This is not the kind of place you'd expect to find hope.
Chino State Prison, 40 miles east of Los Angeles,
is a place of guard towers and barbed wire, rules and regimentation.
Where most of the nearly 6,000 inmates
serve one monotonous day of hard time, after another.
Their lives and ambitions on hold, until their sentences end.
[cadence call] ♪ I had a dog, his name was Blue. ♪
[response] ♪ I had a dog, his name was Blue. ♪
Then, there are these guys.
[cadence call] ♪ And keep on running. ♪
[response] ♪ And keep on running. ♪
[cadence call] ♪ We're gonna get through me. ♪
[response] ♪ We're gonna get through me. ♪
A hard-charging, close-knit band of inmates,
who've signed up for one of the most unusual and toughest prison rehabilitation
programs in the world.
(dive leader) ...guys ready?
(divers) Ready.
(dive leader) One, two, three.
[splash]
One that turns convicted felos into elite commercial divers.
It is a diving school, but basically what it is, is a business that salvages lives.
Fred Johnson is the no-nonsense director
of Chino Prison's Marine Technology Training Center.
I tell them right up front,
"You don't deserve respect. You're a prisoner. What's respectful about that."
(dive leader) Any questions about what we're going to do?
(Johnson) You stay here, we'll teach you to be men,
and you'll get our respect.
You have to earn it. We don't give it away.
The inmates who enroll in this program, from convicted bank robbers to drug dealers,
hope the skills they learn hee will give them a clean start.
John Fernandez is serving a four-year sentence for felony firearm possession.
For me, personally, it, it's--this is like a life-changing experience.
You have to want to change.
You have to want to be--to be different.
A lot of them guys back there, they don't seem to want that.
They're stuck in their ways, and the men back here have made that decision to cross that gate,
and try for the hardest. At the end of the day,
after all this working out, and swimming, and running, and everything,
and all these crazy things we do, the--the thing that really counts is heart.
[cadence call] One, two, three. [response] Twenty-seven.
[cadence call] One, two, three. [response] Twenty-eight.
[cadence call] One, two, three.
But first, they have to survie the grueling 18-month long training program.
[cadence call] One, two, three. [response] Ten.
[cadence call] One, two, three. [response] Eleven.
That means burning off pounds and sweating gallons.
Hitting the books, and mastering subjects from physics to physiology.
Getting hands dirty welding, and learning construction techniques.
And of course, there's clocking hundreds of hours in the water,
where the inmates master everything,
from swimming fundamentals...
to far more technical forms of diving.
I wouldn't consider what I did before, swimming.
I was just floating around.
Now--Now, I consider what I do swimming.
So, how would you rate the task that he's performing,
in terms of difficulty, among the sort of things that,
you know, regular professional divers would be doing?
(Johnson) Well, on a scale of one to ten, it's probably an eight.
(Okwu) It's an eight? It's all as tough as it looks.
Eight out of ten prisoners who start the dive program, don't make it to graduation.
This program is a challenge.
It's not just a walk in the park. It's not like the regular, just carpentry.
You come in here and get some skills; the regular welding or the regular bricklaying.
This is--you're going to be pushed ultimately to the test, 24 hours a day.
You know what I mean, back here. It's not--it's not for everybody.
Peter Kelly is serving five years for bank robbery.
It's all struggle and pain back here.
We putting ourselves through the ultimate, back here.
It's nothing easy. This wasn't-- this is not given to us on a silver platter.
If you got heart, you going to be able to make the program.
So you're learning a lot more than just diving?
Oh, my God, yes. Yes. You're learning--you're learning who you are.
What we say around here is, "a quitter is unteachable,"
and that's simple as that, he's untrainable.
We're gonna muster up again.
Jeff Powers, who is also a Nay submarine rescue diver, is the co-instructor here.
(dive leader) See if you can touch the bottom.
He says the water can intimidate even the toughest inmate.
Everybody is real bad, you know, they're real tough guys.
But when it comes to a diving curriculum, you have to really own what you say.
It doesn't matter how tall you are, how big you are, the water makes everybody this tall.
For all the challenges here though,
the dive training compound is also a kind of oasis for these men.
Back here, we're free.
We're free from the--from the prison politics and everything goes back on the yard.
Once you cross that gate, you're entering a whole 'nother-- a whole 'nother world.
But--but back here, we don't have to worry about that.
California's prisons are notorious for ethnic gangs,
that can dominate the general population.
Racial tensions run high.
But here, the dive program helps to wash the color lines away.
Back here, we're all together. We're a team.
Everything we do is as--as a unit. You train together. You learn together in the classroom.
Everything you do, is a-- you're a unit;
you learn teamwork and brotherhood.
Inmates who graduate from the program and serve their sentences,
are hoping for adventurous jos with potential six-figure paychecks in commercial divin.
One of the students with the highest hopes for this progra,
is also the youngest: 18-year-old Josh Roberts.
I--just tired of being angry at everybody,
and just tired of all the drugs and all the stuff that I was doing.
I'm ready to move on.
With his dad also in prison, his mom battling drug addiction,
Josh's hard-luck life started early.
He recently transferred from the California Youth Authorit;
is now serving a six-year sentence on assault charges.
I just hope that this takes me to a better place than I was when I first got locked up.
Um, I'm not expecting to have everything.
Just want a normal life.
But first, Josh will have to learn to swim.
Really swim.
When I swam my first mile, I never expected it to be that hard.
It was exhausting. I was tired when I got out of the pool.
I threw up a couple of times. You know, I never thought it would be that hard,
and then getting to the bottom of the pool and doing a project on the bottom of the pool...
looked easy at first.
But then when you're down there doing it, it's really not.
He knows what he needs to do. He knows that he needs to be here.
And he knows that we're going to get him through training.
That part, is--we've made huge leaps and bounds--
[cadence call] One, two, three. [cadence response] Thirty-nine.
[cadence call] One, two, three. [cadence response] Forty.
--but, you know, if he quits tomorrow, then that's the breaks, you know.
[cadence call] One, two, three. [cadence response] Forty.
(dive leader) Divers, double time. Ho!
However, this $350,000 a year program,
supported by sales of Prison Industry products
and contributions from the dive industry,
faces its own challenges staying afloat.
Budget cuts or even eliminatin are always possibilities.
Then there are the criticisms from both in and outside of the prison system,
that inmates shouldn't be getting job training
that would cost upwards of $15,000 in the outside world.
Actually, I hear that often.
You know, why are we spending my--our money on something like that--
it has to be expensive to do.
Our recidivism rate is 3%. The general population is 70%.
So that kind of says something about the program.
In a prison system where real and lasting rehabilitation is rare,
the Chino divers know they're lucky to get this chance.
Especially Michael Console,
who has been in and out of California prisons for over 20 years.
Nobody gives you any assistance. There's no help, there's no programs.
They throw you out of the gate, and that's it. And, that's as far as you go--
(dive leader) Prepare for a bailout- check diver.
(diver) Prepare for the bailout.
--and, someone is giving me an opportunity, and take it and run with it. And change my life.
[splash]
You know, I'll probably never have another opportunity.
I can't afford the money to go to a college or anything like that.
So I'm going to take this opportunity that they're giving me,
and do the best I can with it.
And hopefully never see this place again.
It's easy for these men to forget where they are when they're training.
But that all ends at the end of the day.
When the gate is open, and thy rejoin their fellow inmates.
I'm Michael Okwu, for SoCal connected.
[Latin-sounding music]
[end music]
I'm Val Zavala, we'll see you next time. Good night.