Ingram State Technical College is planning a new workforce training building at the residential rehabilitation facility for state parolees and probationers.
Meanwhile, at least one Alabama lawmaker sees a potential expanded use for what is known as the PREP Center in Perry County.
The center, operated by the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, offers substance abuse and mental health treatment and job training courses. The educational programs are run by Ingram State, which has other correctional education offerings around the state.
The new building proposed by Ingram State would allow for more workforce training on heavy equipment.
Since opening in 2022, 232 men have graduated from PREP, all with employment and housing plans. None have landed back in prison, according to the bureau’s data.
A lack of employable skills and a place to reside are some of the reasons cited that about 30% of those recently released commit new crimes within two years.
The mostly open-air structure will also include two classrooms and a concrete pad for forklift operation training, Mark Salmon, Alabama Community College System’s chief facilities officer, told the ACCS board at a meeting Wednesday.
“We’re standing up a building there, board members, to be able to house and accommodate training for skid steers, backhoes, dozers, any other outdoor-type of equipment that will be under about 20,000-square feet of a building that protects that facility and the use of it from rain and so forth,” Salmon said.
“It is a very robust center for a lot of the workforce skills that are being offered by Ingram.”
In its 2026 budget request approved on Wednesday, ACCS is asking $18.3 million in funding – a 60% increase over the current year’s allocation – for operations and maintenance at Ingram State’s programs at PREP.
Cost was not discussed Wednesday and Salmon said the system plans to bid the project in January and get board approval in February for a spring 2025 construction start. It should be complete by March 2026.
Lawmakers in 2021, as part of a larger prison construction plan, appropriated $19 million for the purchase and renovation of what had previously been a 730-inmate private prison. It opened as the PREP Center about a year later.
Now, bureau director Cam Ward said it has a memorandum of understanding with Ingram State to sell it a piece of property for the training facility.
“Sometimes we don’t have to pass a new law (to get things done), we just need to look at what other agencies are doing and partner with them,” Ward said. “This is a great example of that.”
The bureau has initially kept the PREP population small, with 90-day programs of about 80 men at a time now. While the programs will grow some, Ward said, too large a population causes problems.
“There’s a belief that we should be enrolling hundreds at a time,” Ward said. “It doesn’t work. If a class gets too big, you dilute the programming you’re trying to put in place.”
Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Range, the Senate General Fund budget committee chairman, on Wednesday said there could be additional future uses for the center. Albritton has been a major advocate for the state’s two new prisons, one of which is well under construction and the other still in the planning stages. “I anticipate this facility being used during prisoner transfers from old to new (prisons), then possibly restructured for more versatile use,” Albritton told Alabama Daily News on Wednesday.
But there are additional residents at the Uniontown facility right now. The Dallas County jail was heavily damaged in the January 2023 tornado and Ward said the sheriff approached the bureau about housing inmates.
“They rent space from us for some of their inmates and they pay for food, utilities and all that,” Ward said. The sheriff’s department provides staffing at the facility, he said. They are separate from the PREP Center enrollees.
“We’re cooperating with (Dallas County) until they get a new jail built,” Ward said.