Prison programs: Inmates working, preparing for life outside

Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2003 | 11:14 a.m.

At Southern Desert Correctional Center, some inmates rake rocks from the hardpan so others can't throw them.

Still, Department of Corrections Director Jackie Crawford thinks most of that prison's 1,300 inmates and thousands of others in Nevada can turn a new leaf when they get out of prison. She led a tour Monday to show how the state's prisons are trying to help prisoners leave their lives of crime.

"Things have changed here," Crawford, who is in her third year as director, told an audience that included Gov. Kenny Guinn, corrections officials, and social services agencies.

"We're seeing that it's not a corrections department if you're not correcting something," she said.

In the first of four tours of Nevada's prison system that the department will offer during the next two years, officials showed off programs that put inmates to work turning old trucks into new trucks, helping them deal with addictions and training them to apply for jobs and live with family members again when they are released.

"If we don't do something with the people when they come here, they will come right back," said Guinn, who supports the department's approach.

Those who work with the state's inmates before and after they are behind bars said Crawford's ideas sound good on paper, but need to be applied with an eye for certain details if they are to succeed.

Donna Metcalf, president of the 5-year-old nonprofit, Friends and Family of Incarcerated Persons, said she hoped all those who wanted to participate in the programs could find out about them in a timely fashion.

"A lot of times, inmates will write their families or friends outside asking about programs in the prisons because it's hard for them to find out about them from their caseworkers inside," Metcalf said.

The programs -- including prison industries that have doubled in size in the last two years -- involve up to about 15 percent of the state's total population behind bars, which numbers about 10,000, Crawford said.

Still, she hopes to expand them in the coming years to reach up to 65 percent of all inmates, acknowledging that about 25 percent -- violent offenders -- might not be acceptable for such programs.

Federal grants pay for most of the programs shown on the tour -- like the "Going Home Prepared" pilot program for violent offenders at Southern Desert.

But Crawford hopes to find funding in the future with an increased budget from the Legislature, more federal grants and revenues from the industries being added to prisons around the state.

But Metcalf said that making inmates pay for programs like counseling for addictions with their work wouldn't be fair unless those same inmates could also participate in the programs.

Crawford said she would "do everything possible" to set up schedules for the inmates so they could work during the day and attend such programs at night.

Reva Anderson, director for the Diversity Leadership Institute, a Las Vegas nonprofit that works with HIV/AIDS, said after Monday's tour that she supported the programs showcased, but that the work didn't stop when inmates are released.

Former convicts have to struggle to find employers who will hire them and landlords who will rent to them, Anderson said.

"The whole community has to buy into this," she said.

Richard Blue, manager of the Nevada Workforce Investment Board, which oversees a network of employment offices called JobConnect, said he would be getting the word out to chambers of commerce about the prison's approach to getting inmates job-ready.

"If you look at it from pure dollars and cents, it's a good idea for them to hire employees in their own back yard," Blue said.

"They are going to come out and it's far better to give them employment opportunities than have us all run the risk of becoming victims," he said.

District Attorney David Roger isn't sold on the "Going Home Prepared" program. He said he was "not convinced that these people won't re-offend."

His office will set up a special court in the coming months to handle former inmates who go through the program and are charged with minor offenses after being released. The problem with that part of the plan, he said, is that the Legislature didn't fund the court.

"I am going to do it because it benefits the criminal justice system," Roger said.

"But it drains our resources."

In the end, Metcalf said, inmates that want to rehabilitate themselves should receive all the support they need. This, she said, helps society as a whole.

"We need to help them be the best they can," she said.

"The community needs to understand they keep getting out ... and they will be shopping in Albertson's, standing in line at the bank, and mowing your lawn."