Florida’s First Re-Entry Prison
Florida DOC Warden Rod James knows that while prisons can keep criminals off the streets, they’re not doing enough to change behavior. “We need to take a different approach, see if we can’t keep people from coming back,” he said, reports the Tampa Bay Online.
The state Department of Corrections is trying to do just that with an experiment at the recently opened Demilley Correctional Institute in Polk City. Demilley, a former Department of Juvenile Justice site, has been converted into Florida’s first transitional re-entry prison. Inmates receive computer skills training, school education and substance abuse counseling. They are taught life skills and receive 100 hours of transitional training, learning everything from how to complete a job application to how to interview for a job. Classes include information on institutionalization and breaking the cycle. The prison eventually plans to teach inmates culinary skills. The idea is an ex-con with marketable job skills will have less reason to return to crime …
“One of the things Secretary [Walter] McNeil asked is, ‘Do we want to be a Department of Incarceration or a Department of Corrections?’ ” James said. “I think everybody who works in this prison has to have a different mindset. This prison is a great experiment” … “We can’t keep building our way out of this problem,” said Franchatta Barber, assistant secretary of re-entry for the corrections department …
Inmates began arriving late last year at Demilley, a medium security prison. About 270 inmates are now on site, though soon there will be 384. Their ages, education levels and criminal offenses run the gamut. Demilley’s inmates are required to have three years or less left behind bars.