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Positive Changes for Inmates Seen After LCJC Program
05/28/2008
Newly released Corps graduate Nijay Dones with Mentor Coordinator Krenston Price
Positive Changes For Inmates Seen After LCJC Program
By Bob Small
The Chronicle – Lowcountry Connection
May 28, 2008
Finding a job and staying out of trouble can be a tough assignment if you have just been released from prison and are trying to get your life back in order. The Lowcountry Civic Justice Corps is reaching inside the prison walls and selecting inmates for a program that will make that transition easier.
Since February 2007, the program has taken two dozen non-violent offenders from Coastal Pre-release Center and provided vocational training and opportunities for their educational advancement.
The LCJC is sponsored by the Noisette Foundation through a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service. North Charleston is one of three sites nationally picked to participate in the pilot program. The other pilot demonstration sites are in Washington D.C. and Central Oregon.
Krenston Price, Mentoring Coordinator for the program said the program has had two graduation classes and will soon be graduating a third. He said each class consists of no more than twelve inmates nearing completion of their sentence.
Prospective candidates for the program are chosen through interviews with the Department of Correction staff that look into disciplinary history, individual interviews and educational testing.
The program runs for 500 hours with 40 hours per week. Participants learn demolition, interior and exterior painting, renovations, home additions, carpentry and ‘Green’ (environmental) building.
Those in the program are paid between $8.00-$15.00 an hour, depending on status as a worker or supervisor.
When they successfully complete the program they are eligible to receive a $2300 education award after completing 900 hours of community service. The award can only be used to further their education.
Price says the program is working nicely and that only two participants who have enrolled have not completed the program.
The success of the program, according to Price, has been the mentoring corps he has put together.
“We have mentors who are there when the inmates come into the program. We help them if they have child support issues, or issues adjusting to being on the outside and how to handle and prioritize their lives to be successful.”
Price feels the tracking process instituted for participants when they leave the program is added help in keeping participants from going back into the system.
The program currently only operates from the North Charleston Pre-release Center. If Price has his way, the program will expand to other facilities to serve more inmates trying to adjust to life back on the streets.
“Our aim is to stop the recidivism rate of inmates getting out. We want them to be successful and we want them to realize that mentoring is a major part in realizing that effect”, he said.
LCJC sponsors include: Home Depot, Marco Tools, Hughes Lumber, 84 Lumber, Sellars Hardware, Liberty Hill Improvement Council, Starbucks, Green Mountain Coffee and DeWalt Factory Tools.
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