Community Corrections Classrooms
Officials at the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office on Monday celebrated the opening of a new multipurpose classroom at its Community Corrections campus. News reported by The Advocate.
The campus, in the old J. Wallace James elementary school, is the setting for educational and employment services and counseling for offenders who otherwise would be incarcerated at the parish jail.
Rob Reardon, director of the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center, said the campus population has doubled in the last year, from around 80 people to about 170, receiving services ranging from substance abuse counseling to GED preparation and testing. Some of the offenders are on home detention, others are work-release inmates.
The classroom will primarily be used for the campus’ successful GED program, which has about 200 people enrolled, said Pam Justice, community corrections manager. To receive a Louisiana high school equivalency diploma, students must pass the General Education Development test.
Justice said they are seeing big increases in the center’s literacy program. Justice said 49 percent of the 199 people enrolled last year in the GED program tested below the fifth-grade level. “We’re finding that a lot of them cannot even fill out a job application,” Justice said.
Because of the program, she said, there are a number of people now reading at fifth- and sixth-grade levels.
Hunter Beasley, a Lafayette Parish School Board member, attended the ribbon-cutting and praised the work taking place on the campus. “They’ve been very successful this year compared to previous years,” Beasley said. “I think it’s a very good idea and the sheriff is supporting it and putting the resources behind it.”
The campus serves a range of functions, many of which help free up space in LPCC, which is nearly always hovering near or at its capacity of 954 inmates.
Reardon said the classroom was built by inmates at a cost of about $24,000.
Community Corrections, Inmate Education, LA Lafayette Parish
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