California — A diver’s training program offered by the Marine Technology Training Center at the California Institution for Men provides inmates with the skills to secure high paying jobs, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The program graduated its first class this year after insufficient funds led to a five-year hiatus. The state is contracting with the Prison Industry Authority, a state agency that operates manufacturing and agricultural facilities at state prisons, for $400,000 a year to operate the program.

Program graduates complete 1,800 hours of course-based work, including physics, diving medicine, blueprint reading, seamanship and underwater welding. After inmates are released they are qualified to seek offshore construction jobs in oil drilling, bridge building, and diesel engine repair and operation.

Illinois — For the past seven years, Dwight Correctional Center, the state’s largest women’s prison, has run a program in which inmates train dogs for the disabled, reported the Chicago Tribune. Prison officials said the program serves as a form of rehabilitation because the dogs fill an emotional void for inmates, and women who complete the program are less likely to recidivate. Of the 39 women who trained dogs and have been released, only two have returned to prison. According to Warden Mary Sigler, the program director, “The inmates bond with these dogs and that bond serves the inmate and the dogs really well.”

On a typical day, inmates groom, walk and train the dogs to do activities such as carry backpacks and open doors. At night, the dogs sleep in cages in the prisoners’ cells. The program has placed 150 dogs since its inception. 

Ohio — The Associated Press reported that Gov. Ted Strickland signed a bill in March that will allow faith-based and volunteer groups to register and provide services to Ohio’s departments of adult corrections and youth services. The goal of the bill, which stemmed from the Ohio Correctional Faith-Based Task Force, is to bring organization to volunteer programs in the hopes of easing reentry — and reducing recidivism — among Ohio’s ex-offender population. In 2006, the task force issued suggestions on ways faith-based and other volunteer groups could help inmates. It also held community forums to prepare the public for released inmates and to help eradicate the stigma against ex-offenders.

Strickland signed the bill during a time when the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections is tasked with cutting $74 million before July 2009. DRC Director Terry Collins sees the issue of reentry as a community endeavor. “All 88 counties will get somebody back in their county. …We all have a hand in this.”

Texas — About 4,000 telephones will be installed in Texas prisons under a new law that allows inmates greater access to phones. According to The Dallas Morning News, inmates’ use of the phones will be limited to prepaid or collect calls to landline numbers on an approved list. Inmates will be able to use the phones for a maximum of 120 minutes a month, and the cost — which has been exorbitant in other states — will be consistent with the cost in county jails. The first $10 million generated each year by the calls will go to the state’s victim compensation fund.

About 120,000 of the state’s 155,000 inmates will be eligible for the privilege, which is expected to be a “good management tool,” according to Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. “It offers incentives to offenders to behave.”

Click for front page                        Click for On the Record