'Hangover' Producer Turned Prison Mentor Offers California Inmates New Hope

— -- As valedictorian of his graduating class, 26-year-old Sean Wilson was beaming as he got in line with about 100 other men to receive his college diploma.

But this wasn’t a typical college graduation.

Wilson and his fellow classmates are all convicts, serving time at California’s Ironwood State Prison, and this graduation ceremony was held behind bars with correction officers watching close by.

Many of these inmates were able to get a college degree thanks to an unlikely advocate.

Scott Budnick, a former Hollywood producer best known for “The Hangover” franchise, is now a regular face in around 20 of California’s 34 state prisons, where he works to mentor and rehabilitate inmates who are in prison for everything from armed robbery to murder.

“I am interested in dealing with anybody who wants to change, or doesn’t really know the path to take to get there, or needs the help to get there,” Budnick said.

Budnick first embarked on this mission a decade ago when a colleague invited him to attend a writing class at a prison.

“I walked into Juvenile Hall for my first time and sat down with a bunch of kids facing life ... in prison, and that day changed my life,” he said.

That experience gave Budnick a reality check about how he was living his own life.

“I was just in this Hollywood bubble,” he said. “Going to nice restaurants every night, going to nightclubs and partying with D-list actors and thinking that was cool, and that’s not how I was raised. ... I had lost that desire to give back, and I wanted to reclaim it.”

Budnick did so by hosting creative writing classes at prisons like Ironwood, working with inmates in all forms of writing, from screenplays to poetry.

“As soon as they start to see themselves as a writer or see themselves as a poet or screenwriter or novelist, then they don’t see themselves as a gang member or a criminal,” he said.

And that’s what happened to Sean Wilson.

Growing up, Wilson said he had big dreams of being a football star. But raised by a single mom, he said he started “looking for a father figure” in the wrong places.

“I really didn’t have an identity of who I really was,” he said. “I think I sought the wrong male role models and I think that’s kind of where everything went wrong.”

At 16 years old, Wilson was arrested for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He said the thing he remembers about the day he was sentenced was the look on his mother’s face.

“I had an idea of how much time that I would do, so it really didn’t bother me,” Wilson said. “But my mother’s face ... it looked like she was at my funeral.”

“I couldn’t believe that I had did this to my mother,” he continued. “That I was just so selfish and careless about everything that she had did for me growing up, all the sacrifices she had made for me. ... I made my mother feel like she failed as a mother.”

Wilson spent his first few years in prison trying to figure out how he was going to pass the time.

“I had nothing to do,” he said. “There was no education. There was nothing for me to be involved in, just a place to work out in a gang of people who are never going home.”

When he first met him, Budnick said Wilson was a kind of a “super gangster.” But as he got into the writing program, he started to see a change in him.

“I watched Sean’s transformation happen through education,” Budnick said, “When Sean realized that he wasn’t stupid like everyone has told him his entire life and realized that he really had a sharp intellect and was good at school everything began to change.”

As a result of Scott Budnick’s efforts and support of Wilson, he decided to pursue formal education while in prison -- Ironwood offers college programs to inmates. This June, Wilson received his associate’s degree in Liberal Arts, Business and Technology and graduated summa cum laude. Ironwood has held graduations before, but Wilson's was the first one Budnick had attended.

“Watching him graduate was probably one of the few times I have cried during that ceremony,” Budnick said. “It was unbelievable, and I felt like I wasn’t in prison.”

Budnick estimates that he has worked with 1,200 inmates over the years and that “probably 98 percent” have received a high school diploma or GED, 90 percent have taken college courses or completed a trade, and roughly half have gotten a college degree or are in the process.

But not all of the prisons where Budnick mentors inmates are the same. At Pelican Bay State Prison, the vibe is very different. This facility houses some of California’s most dangerous and violent criminals, who are kept in isolation for almost 23 hours a day inside the prison’s Security Housing Unit or SHU.

“It’s a really intense place,” Budnick said. “It’s a concrete bunker that’s silent and every movement of every inmate happens under escort.”

One of the inmates Budnick mentors there is Jose Flores, who is currently serving a life sentence for robbery, extortion and possession of a firearm as a convicted felon. He was placed in the SHU because of his alliances with prison gangs.

Due to prison restrictions, the most Budnick can do in working with Flores is talk with him through the door of his cell and be a mentor of sorts.

“Jose is probably the most interesting guy there,” Budnick said “He has been used to people telling him he is no good his whole life. ... He said not until we showed up on that day that he made the decision to change.”

Budnick admits that while he extends his mentorship to all kinds of criminals, there are some extreme cases that he won’t work with.

“When I find out they commit an offense that’s really, really egregious that I can’t even wrap my mind around, often times it’s very hard core like a sex offense, it’s something that I don’t really know how to deal with,” he said. “Also when someone has a really severe mental health issue, or has a severe substance abuse issue, then that really changes the game.”

But he said he does try to look past their crimes and see the inmates for the people they used to be before they were incarcerated. If the prisoners are willing to do the work, then Budnick believes they deserve a second chance.

“We’re talking about human beings that are sons, fathers, that are brothers, that are mother’s children that their mother hasn’t been able to hug in decades,” he said. “And to understand someone, to have empathy for someone, even someone who commits the worst act ... when you see pictures of [Jose Flores’] family ... this is why we want him to be a better person. This is why we want to support him in his growth."

When asked if he has gotten any responses to his program from victims of the crimes these men committed, Budnick said it’s been a “diverse” reaction.

“There are some that get to an incredible place of forgiveness ... and there is some that rightfully stay angry for a very long time,” he said. “I don’t believe that, with the youth and young adults that I work with, I don’t think they will ever be whole and be able to wholly succeed if they don’t come to terms with the pain that they have caused by committing their different crimes.”

In addition to his mentor programs, Budnick has been proactive in changing state policies about young prisoners. He and his nonprofit group, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, were instrumental in getting California Senate Bill 260 passed, which went into law in 2013. The law says if an inmate committed a crime when they were under age 18 and has already served 15 years, that inmate now has a chance at parole. Budnick said this bill gave hope to juvenile offenders because it gives them reason to get an education now that they have the chance to face the parole board.

“A parole board can still deny you, but what it does is create hope, and hope in prison is everything,” Budnick said.

Hope is something Budnick's mentor programs have given many of the inmates he works with in helping them to realize that they have potential.

Soon, Wilson will get the chance to show he can turn his life around. After serving nearly a decade in prison, he is serving the last year of his sentence. When he gets out, Wilson said he wants to become a fitness trainer and go to school for music production.

“I want to give back to kids who were like me, who didn’t believe that they can be anything or do anything,” Wilson said. “I want to believe in somebody else like Scott believed in me. I want to give somebody that same feeling, because I think that’s the very thing that would have kept me out of places like this.”