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Warren County jail begins programs to address recidivism

Daily News - 8/3/2017

Programs aimed at reducing recidivism and promoting positive personal change for Warren County Regional Jail inmates are expected to yield significant returns for the jail, inmates and taxpayers.

Late last month, the jail once again began offering moral reconation therapy to a limited pool of inmates. In November, Warren County Jailer Stephen Harmon, along with five deputies, will attend certification training so they can teach the classes and expand the program to additional inmates who are serving post-conviction sentences.

"Just before I was appointed in April, I saw a presentation about MRT and knew right away it was perfectly in line with one of my priorities as a jailer: re-entry preparedness for the inmates," Harmon said. "I'm four months into my new assignment and while care, custody and control of the inmates in the facility are paramount, part of caring for the inmates is looking into their future and helping them to prepare for release."

The first recent MRT class began July 20 with the assistance of the state Department of Probation and Parole. MRT was last offered at the jail in 2015. Currently, an employee of probation and parole is teaching the MRT program to 13 inmates. An additional 74 inmates are on the waiting list.

"It's going very well," Harmon said. "I think as we build on that and get our own staff certified, it's sure to be a success. I'm very pleased. Because of the foundation that we've built with probation and parole as we've kicked off these MRT classes, I'm excited about what these classes bring to the table for the staff and the inmates."

MRT is a treatment strategy aimed at increasing better thought-based decision making and more acceptable behavior. Inmates learn to break down their behavior to look at where they are, where they have been and what put them there, while accepting responsibility for their decisions.

In Simpson County, where the jail has offered MRT for more than a year, that program ? along with others designed to address recidivism, behavior and addiction ? has saved taxpayers $890,000 in 16 months because of the amount of time shaved from inmate sentences for participating in the programs.

Additionally, 60 people have completed the MRT program in Simpson County and of those, only one person has been arrested on new charges after being released from jail, Simpson County Jail programs director Ashely Penn said.

"Within the facility you can tell a huge difference in an inmate who is participating in MRT or any other program versus someone who is not involved in anything to better themselves," Penn said. "That goes for their morale is boosted. We have less fights from those people. We have less disciplinary actions from those people and the camaraderie of the people in those programs is higher than the people who are not."

Simpson County currently has three MRT classes with 15 people in each class.

"They feed off of positive attitudes from each other instead of the negative," Simpson County Jailer Eric Vaughn said.

"For the inmate, it gives them a different look on life versus what they are accustomed to because most of them are repeat offenders," Vaughn said. "As far as the facility it helps us in a lot of ways, morale being one of them which creates a safer environment. The ultimate goal is to try to get them out and make them taxpayers instead of costing the taxpayers and making them be responsible, productive citizens instead of liabilities to the commonwealth."

The benefit to the public is for the nominal investment in getting deputies certified to teach the program. It's successful even if only a small percentage of the inmates are not arrested again, Harmon said.

"Classes like this are stepping stones to transition county jails from warehousing inmates to rehabilitating people," Harmon said.

In addition to MRT, the Warren County jail plans to begin offering another program, Parolee Orientation Re-entry Training Assimilation Lesson Plan, or Portal. These classes teach inmates life management skills. Both MRT and Portal also allow inmates to receive credits on the state sentences.

"The jail shouldn't be only for incarceration but it should give programs that are constructive to the rehabilitation of the incarcerated individuals," Warren County Jail Lt. Douglas Miles said.

"Stephen (Harmon) has been very proactive to supporting programs that can benefit the rehabilitation of inmates," Miles said.

"He and I want to see the jail get more programs that are beneficial to the re-entry part of individuals so that when they get out they have more tools to be successful when they leave the jail," Miles said.

? Follow Night Editor and Senior Reporter Deborah Highland on Twitter @BGDNCrimebeat or visit bgdailynews.com.