SACRAMENTO, Calif. Jamie Mason was more than 20 years into her career in specialty coffee when she got a call from an alarming source: the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.
The Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center was starting a coffee education and barista training program, a lieutenant told Mason, and they wanted her to lead it. She demurred at first, content to write curriculum and design the cafe’s layout, before taking the reins in November 2020.
Thus began Redemption Coffee, the Elk Grove jail’s internal cafe and training center for soon-to-be-released female inmates. Twenty-one women graduated since Mason took over, and alumnae have landed jobs as baristas and roasters at Camellia Coffee Roasters and Bewley’s, the parent company of Java City.
