A now-empty Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles’ residential facility in Clarke County would get a new name and population under legislation currently in the Alabama Legislature.
Senate Bill 5 and House Bill 52 change existing law that says ABPP can have one or more residential centers for parolees and probationers to add “one of which must be a women’s facility named the Women’s CARE Facility.”
Plans are underway to open the short-term residential center with educational and drug treatment services at the former LifeTech center in Thomasville. The board currently has a day reporting center there and J.F. Ingram State Technical College, the community college’s prison education arm, already has educational offerings there.
“The residential facility is already there, there’s just nobody there,” said ABPP Director Cam Ward.
Last year, ABPP opened the Perry County Probation and Parole Reentry Education Program Center, a men’s facility. At the time, Ward said it would be a model for future sites, including one for women.
The Thomasville site had previously been a men’s training facility. In 2019, then-ABPP Director Charlie Graddick withdrew the agency from LifeTech, ending it’s use as a residential facility. At the time, Ward, then a state senator, and ACCS Chancellor Jimmy Baker argued it should stay open. Prior to its closure, LifeTech had provided skills training to more than 6,300 offenders since 2006 and had a recidivism rate of 13%, less than half of the statewide recidivism rate. The ACCS oversaw the educational aspect of the site and provided instructors.
Putting the center into law will give it more stability, Ward told Alabama Daily News.
“Once it’s in the law, it will be more permanent,” Ward said. “I think one of the problems Pardons and Paroles has had over the years is swinging roughly between different pendulums about what our mission is. This puts it into law and prohibits us from turning away from it in the future.”
Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile, and Sen. Linda Madison-Coleman, D-Birmingham, are the legislation sponsors.
“This is a proven model,” Coleman-Madison told Alabama Daily News about education and job skills attainment lowering the chances someone will return to prison. “We know that education is the key.”
Meanwhile, as the state’s unemployment rate stays at record lows, employers are searching for skilled workers. Those leaving the criminal justice system with skills are an asset.
“We have to find alternatives to locking people up and that’s a huge potential workforce there,” Coleman-Madison said.
Ingram State already offers welding, electrical, and adult education to ABPP clients at the Thomasville Regional Day Reporting Center. It is in the beginning phases of adding a state-of-the-art commercial driver’s license training pad where enrollees can test their driving skills. That commercial truck driving program is projected to start this 2023.
“If the site expands into a residential facility, the college is fully prepared and staffed to begin offering career technical programming and adult education services immediately,” spokeswoman Samantha Rose told ADN in an email.
Ingram State offers CDL training options to women at Montgomery and Elmore County facilities.
“That has become one of the more popular re-entry jobs for women,” Ward said. “And it pays great money.”
Ward said once the law passes, his agency can begin operations at CARE with existing funding.
“We own the building, that’s always the largest expense,” he said.
“… It is an older facility, so there will be some maintenance and upkeep expenses,” he said. When it was still a men’s center, new perimeter fencing was installed.
Ward said CARE will first serve about 40 to 50 women.