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Schooling reduces the chance inmates will reoffend, but in Alabama prisons, enrollment is dropping

Anniston Star - 7/23/2017

July 22--ELMORE -- At a J.F. Ingram State Technical College in Elmore, two prison inmates leaned over a large circle of steel. They snapped goggles over their eyes and fired up torches. Sparks flew as they heated the metal, fusing it together.

The inmates took their goggles off to look at their work. Another piece of the barbeque grill was done.

In J.F. Ingram's welding classes, inmates make everything from scrap, said welding instructor Billy Wesson. He said the inmates learn to draw designs, cut pieces from sheet metal and weld them together into a final piece.

"Scrap metal costs less," Wesson said. "We use every piece. We even make our own hinges."

Scenes like these aren't as common as they once were in Alabama prisons. Over the past decade, enrollment in community college courses in Alabama prisons -- programs often cited as the best way to keep released inmates from offending again -- has dropped by about a third.

State officials aren't entirely sure why, and at times they haven't even been able to say how bad the enrollment decline is. According to numbers reported to the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, about 400 students are now enrolled in J.F. Ingram Community College, the state's inmate-only college. A decade ago there were nearly 700.

Finding money for the program is hard, state officials say.

"You have so many people who look at correctional education and say, 'but you're not funding K-12,'" said state Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, a member of Ingram's board of trustees. "It's not popular and the politics don't always match up."

Getting out, staying out

U.S. Department of Justice data show two-thirds of released prisoners go back to prison within three years. That number jumps to 87 percent within nine years.

In-prison education can lower that rate, said Lois Davis, a researcher for the RAND Corporation. She's an author of a 2010 Department of Justice study on the topic.

Davis said her study analyzed data taken from 30 years of research studies on in-prison education programs.

"We found an inmate who participated in correctional education had 43 percent lower recidivism rate," Davis said.

There's less research on which in-prison education programs work best, an issue that could matter a lot to J.F. Ingram, where over the years the focus has shifted back and forth, from job training to life-skills courses that don't accrue college credit but do teach basic reading and writing skills.

Cam Ward

The state has sometimes had trouble knowing how many inmate students it has at all. In a state budget hearing in January, then-chancellor of Alabama Community College System Jimmy Baker alarmed lawmakers by telling them enrollment at Ingram had dropped from 1,200 students to less than 400 in the past three to four years. Since then, Ingram has revised those numbers more than once.

Susan Price, interim president at Alabama Department of Postsecondary Education, said she believes Price was mistaken about the enrollment numbers.

"My suspicion hearing those numbers is that there was a mixup with the numbers," Price said. "I think it's comparing apples and oranges."

But there's little doubt the numbers have dropped. Some officials trace the drop to a number of changes that happened five years ago.

Hank Dasinger, past president of J.F. Ingram, said he has seen enrollment drop on several occasions. In 2012, the Alabama Legislature cut 12 percent of the funding for correctional education, he said.

Price said 2012 also saw a restructuring of the education programs within J.F. Ingram. She said that was the year the school removed its developmental education program, which helped students with reading and math, and raised the test scores needed to enroll in trade programs.

"Students used to take developmental education to help with reading or math while taking trade classes," Price said. "In 2012 the president of Ingram decided to get rid of that system and only have adult education and trade programs."

Getting a job, keeping a job

Randy Hall, diesel mechanics instructor at J.F. Ingram's Elmore campus, said the instructors are teaching students more than trade skills.

"We teach them how to work as a team," Hall said. "No one wants to work with someone who can't take instructions. You have to know how to get a job and how to keep a job."

Gadsden State Community College also runs a correctional education program for inmates at St. Clair Correctional Facility in St. Clair County. Gadsden State's program offers classes in air conditioning, refrigeration, masonry and welding.

Tim Green, the dean of Gadsden State's program, said it teaches about 100 students per year. Green doesn't know how many students have found jobs in their trades outside prison walls.

"We really don't have a connection with the inmates once they leave," Green said. "We aren't supposed to. I do know that most of the inmates who completed welding and, I think, all of the inmates who did masonry are employed."

Jerry Medhus, owner of Medhus Welding and Fabrication in Anniston, said he has hired people with criminal records in the past. He said, for him, it depends on the crime.

"I wouldn't hire a child molester or a rapist or anything like that," Medhus said. "I want to know, did they just make a mistake like so many other people?"

Medhus said he is not aware of any laws that would keep someone with a criminal record from being certified as a welder. He said it's left up to the employers to decide who they are comfortable hiring.

Green said correctional education does have a positive effect on the inmates' lives. He said he believes correctional education is "critical to the rehabilitation process.

"The certificate they get when they finish gives them evidence that they've finished a goal," Green said. "It gives them back a sense of self-worth."

'It's like we're paralyzed'

State officials in the past have cited riots in prison as one potential reason for a drop in enrollment. When prisons are on lockdown, inmates can't go to class, and could lose interest.

Improved inmate education was one of the selling points for a proposed $800 million prison construction plan former Gov. Robert Bentley proposed last year. The proposed new prisons were supposed to include more secure spaces to hold classes.

The construction plan has failed to pass the Legislature two years in a row, and supporters have hinted they want to bring it back again. A federal judge recently ordered the state to negotiate with inmates who sued over poor medical care, and any new plan could be shaped by the outcome of that suit.

"It's like we're paralyzed from doing anything until someone sues us," Dasinger said. "That someone is usually the federal government. Then the legislators can blame the feds for forcing the changes."

Rep. Bill Poole, R-Tuscaloosa, said he does not think that is a fair assessment.

"I would not make the argument that these programs are providing the results we would like to see," Poole said.

Poole said he supports correctional education in Alabama prisons, but thinks improving it would have to be part of a larger prison reform.

Ward said critics of correctional education should ask themselves what they want inmates to do when they are released from prison.

"You have to understand, 98 percent of people who go to prison in the United States are going to get out," Ward said. "Do you want that person to be a productive citizen, or do you want to set them up to fail and commit another crime?"

Finding new funding

One of the biggest drops in prison education, Dasinger said, occurred in the 1990s, when federal law blocked inmates from being awarded Pell Grants, a major source of funding for corrective education.

Last year J.F. Ingram was able to secure a spot for the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative.

The initiative, created by President Barack Obama in 2015, allowed correctional education facilities that met Department of Higher Education standards to apply for a spot in an experimental program to reduce recidivism through correctional education.

"It's only at a few locations," Dasinger said. "You had to compete for it. We did, and we won."

Dasinger said the Pell Grant funding hasn't been around long enough to show up in the enrollment data, but it should be seen soon.

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