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Lawmakers Look At Revamping Prison Vocational Programs
February 4, 2016
A House panel Wednesday approved a proposal that would make a major change in programs that provide job training to prison inmates.
The bill (HB 1229), filed by House Judiciary Chairman Charles McBurney, R-Jacksonville, would take the programs away from the non-profit Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises, Inc., and put them under the Department of Corrections.
The non-profit, commonly known as PRIDE, was created in the 1980s to manage the programs, which sell goods and services produced by inmates.
McBurney told the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee that he has received complaints from other lawmakers about PRIDE, which a House staff analysis said “has drawn mixed reviews for generating significant profits while failing to increase the number of inmates participating” in work programs.
“It’s time to do a change,” McBurney said. “The Department of Corrections could do it better.”
But Wilbur Brewton, a lobbyist for PRIDE, cited statistics about inmates who move into jobs when they are released from prison and said PRIDE does not rely on state funding. “It now costs the state zero to take care of this issue,” Brewton said. The Criminal Justice Subcommittee approved the bill, which still would need to clear two more House committees.
A Senate version (SB 1606), filed by Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, has not been heard in committees.
by The News Service of Florida
Comments
One Response to “Lawmakers Look At Revamping Prison Vocational Programs”
The State would save money on prison costs as well as lowering the recidivism rate by offering vocational training to any prisoner that wants to avail themselves of it. Prison vocational programs could be maintaining all the State vehicles, as well as county and city vehicles at a great savings to taxpayers (let’s refurbish that old garbage truck or school bus and stretch the life of it another 5 yrs.). There are shortages of labor in other trades that could be filled by convicts that want to get on the right path. It would be way cheaper to train them than it is to keep them in jail.