Spreading the Cheer Behind Bars: More Than 875 Christmas Gift Bags Handed out in County Jails

Husband and wife Eddie and Alice Perez are working together to change the way the community treats the more than 700 individuals housed in the two Santa Barbara County jails — Eddie through his nonprofit Impact Ministry and Alice as the new inmate services programs manager for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jails — and together the couple has partnered with area organizations to spread the holiday cheer in both facilities, gifting each and every inmate and staff member with a special “Christmas gift bag” in a tradition that is now going on its fifth year.

Before the two met, and before he was ordained as a pastor, Eddie had become all too familiar with the heaviness of the holiday season behind bars. For all of his adult life, all he could remember was Christmas in prison; he spent 38 years in California prisons, 31 of which were spent isolated in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement.

When he was paroled in 2011, after turning his life around and working a 12-step program that centered on deconstructing the mindset of those addicted to a life of crime, Criminals and Gang Members Anonymous, he found himself drawn to Santa Barbara. (Coincidentally enough, Perez said it was because of something he saw in a copy of Santa Barbara Independent that had been left in a McDonald’s in Fullerton, where he was living, and which featured an item on a transitional program for formerly incarcerated students at Santa Barbara City College.)