By MARY SELL, Alabama Daily News
The Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles expects to open by late this month its new short-term residential center focused on rehabilitation and education in Perry County.
Director Cam Ward said the Perry County Probation and Parole Reentry Education Program Center could be a model for future sites, including one for women.
The PREP center is housed at a former private prison site near Uniontown. The Legislature appropriated the money to buy and renovate the site last year as part of a larger prison construction plan.
The bureau has a $5.1 million, two-year contract with GEO Reentry Services for psychological and medical services.
“They will provide the substance abuse and mental health treatment while the state owns and mans the facility,” Ward told Alabama Daily News this week.
The center will open to about a dozen parolees late this month. When it’s fully operational, Ward expects PREP to house about 200 parolees who will be screened for substance abuse issues.
“It will reduce recidivism if we can tackle that problem,” Ward said.
Alabama’s recidivism rate, the frequency the previously incarcerated committee new crimes within three years of release, is about 30%. A previous, smaller residential parolee training program had a recidivism rate of less than half that.
The center will, at least initially, focus on a seven county service area in the Black Belt, including Montgomery County.
Ward also told Alabama Daily News his agency recently entered into a memorandum of understanding with Ingram State Technical College, which provides job training to incarcerated adults, for a training center inside PREP.
“We’ve already started talking to companies about a job placement program,” Ward said.
According to Ingram State, starting in January all PREP clients will have access to adult education programming and select industry certifications training. When a new education building on the campus is complete, Ingram plans to expand industry certification opportunities and offer career technical training in barbering, carpentry, plumbing and industrial maintenance.
Getting people healthy and employed is key to keeping them out of prison long-term, Ward said. And that saves the state money.
“If this works like I think it’s gonna work, I think we’re going to be able to replicate it all over the state,” he said.
Ward said the bureau is now discussing creating a similar facility for women at what is now the LifeTech training center in Thomasville.
Ward has previously said PREP will house parolees who have technical parole violations, such as missed meetings with parole officers or failed drug tests. After repeated technical violations, they’re supposed to go to prison for 45 days under current law. But county jails for years have said those inmates have lingered in the county jails where they’re first sent.
Parolees will spend about 90 days at PREP, but that will vary by individual.