Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, California, has a beauty salon. It started as a vocational prison education program in 1996 when the facility was for women only. Although it’s a men’s prison now, the salon, and the esthetician program, remain in place. It’s a unique way of learning job skills in the prison system, and
In the ongoing discussion of prison reform, mass incarceration, and reducing recidivism, vocational programs are often overlooked in favor of formal educational courses and other activities and programming. Maybe it is assumed that most incarcerated individuals have access to, and participate in, vocational training and prison jobs. At least, that’s what popular TV shows and
Educational and vocational training initiatives in the Pennsylvania prison system have improved conditions for both inmates and staff. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spent 2016 making laudable strides toward helping improve the state of mass incarceration in this country. Corrections Secretary John Wetzel made a statement in December outlining improvements the Department of Corrections (DOC)
Well this is one for the books, apiary books, to be specific. Inmates at several New Zealand prisons are being given training in a surprising area: beekeeping. Apiculture is now being taught to youths at Hawkes’ Bay Regional Prison through a correspondence course at Lincoln University as well as Auckland South Corrections Facility. Honey is
Prisoners in the state of Victoria, Australia, will be part of new plans designed to try and meet prisoners’ educational needs immediately upon entry into the system. The $78 million (AUD) program aims to dramatically improve prisoner access to instruction from a variety of universities, colleges, and institutes across the region. Of particular note is the
A shortage of skilled laborers in the craft of welding is poised to seriously hinder America’s production capacity in the coming years. With education policies emphasizing that all students should pursue “traditional” college upon high school graduation, there’s been a serious drop in the number of individuals pursuing vocational training in the last decade or
By Rebecca Elliott / Houston Chronicle Bags of chips, pairs of tennis shoes, packages of Ramen noodles. Over the years, revenue from purchases made by inmates at the Fort Bend County jail’s commissary has added up. Now, the proceeds are financing an expanded correctional education program, complete with a new vocational training facility. Come January,
Like most municipalities, Cumberland County in southern New Jersey needs to raise its revenues. Last year it found a very effective way to do just that: fill up its jail.
Jails as For-Profit Businesses
While most of the developed world see institutions like hospitals, universities, and prisons as essential public services, the reality is that they are also businesses. Patients, students, and prisoners are commodities to be traded. These men and women are at a vulnerable time in their lives and need the best that the world’s richest country can offer them, but instead the institutions charged with their care look to see how they can profit from them.
Cumberland County Jail: Selling Jail Space
In 2013 Gloucester County officials decided to close their jail. To the south, Cumberland County Jail’s population had fallen by almost two hundred over the preceding five years leaving empty beds. The two counties agreed to a deal, and the first inmates from Gloucester County arrived at Cumberland County Jail, in Bridgeport, in June 2013. Today there are usually at least a hundred Gloucester County inmates in Cumberland Jail at any given time.
The deal gives Cumberland County $10,000 a day for the first hundred inmates, then $83 a day for each additional one. For one hundred Gloucester County inmates, Cumberland County stands to make $3.65 million each year. Indeed, in the first fourteen months they have billed Gloucester County over $4.3 million.
Cumberland Freeholder Director Joseph Derella sees the program as an example of the county developing much needed new sources of revenue. He believes the program is exceeding expectations and wants to extend it further.
Jail Populations as an Indicator of Success?
In what Cumberland County Jail’s Warden Bob Balicki sees as an unintended but beneficial program, the municipal and New Jersey State Police are now locking up around seventy more people a month than they were before the program started, thus boosting the jail population even higher. Despite all the extra inmates at the jail, Warden Balicki has seen no need for extra staff.
Although many inmates remain in local jails for just a short time, many others can spend a year or more serving sentences or simply waiting out lengthy court proceedings before being sent to state prison. It’s a miserable and anxious time, and being held further away from families and friends means fewer visits, and widens rifts between inmates and those on the outside.
In 2015, Alabama will spend $5.4 million on its prisoner postsecondary education program, including Calhoun Community College’s courses at Limestone Correctional Facility. Five schools across the state provide college-level certifications. The Community College courses are separate from adult GED programs in the state’s prisons. According to the Alabama Community College System, in Fall 2013, 1,000
By Christopher Zoukis / Blog Critics
Each weekday morning at the Leavenworth minimum security federal prison camp in Kansas, more than 130 of the camp’s inmates troop off to work at the institution’s Electronic Recycling Factory. For many, this is the first real job that they have ever held.
The Leavenworth Electronics Recycling Factory is a part of Federal Prison Industries, Inc., better known as UNICOR, a wholly-owned government corporation operated within the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Founded in 1934, UNICOR’s objectives are to provide meaningful work for federal prison inmates, to provide vocational training and establish good work habits, and to bring in revenue for the Bureau. That revenue is intended to ensure that UNICOR is at least self-sustaining, and hopefully making a profit.
Across the federal prison system inmates at 80 factories in 65 prisons make military uniforms and other garments, body armor, desks, storage cabinets, awnings, and solar panels, operate print shops, and even sort clothes hangers. Some of these operations provide meaningful vocational and workplace skills that will help the inmates to find employment once they are released from custody, while others are mindless, repetitive jobs which many on the outside regard as indefensible slave labor. In order not to interfere with private commerce, UNICOR’s goods and services are a required “first source” for federal agencies, and its charter limits its sales to federal or state governments, although this is not always the case.
The Department of Defense has long been UNICOR’s biggest customer, accounting for around half of the $750 million annual sales. The downsizing of the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, together with major budget cuts, has meant that the Department of Defense’s spending on UNICOR goods and services has fallen by a third, from $536 million in 2007 to $357 million in 2012.
We have profiled every prison within the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Learn about each prison’s location, security level, educational and recreational offerings, and much more.
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