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The Benton County jail is helping inmates never come back. Here's how

Tri-City Herald - 8/20/2018

Aug. 19--KENNEWICK, Wa. -- Kennewick, WA

A flier hangs on the wall of each housing unit in the Benton County jail with a simple message: Are you ready to change your life?

This is the question a group of volunteers and jail staff are asking the inmates staying in the Redirection Pod.

The pod -- an initiative started by Sheriff Jerry Hatcher -- is closing out its first year of work in trying to give jail inmates the tools to change their lives.

The initiative, which combines extra freedoms with lifestyle coursework, appears to be working for most of them.

So far, 30 inmates have reached the end. Twenty-four of those have stayed out of Benton County jail since finishing.

The basics

Many of the inmates moving through the 12-week program don't know how to fill out an application, apply for a job or pay bills.

"They always have the excuse of, 'Well I don't know where to find housing,' or 'I don't know where to find food,' or 'I don't know where to find clothing,'" Chaplain Charles Wheaton said. "They're not aware and they're not even aware of how to ask."

The redirection program is designed to fill in those holes, Capt. Joshua Shelton said.

This isn't Wheaton's first time in a classroom. He jokingly said he failed at retirement six times before starting as a jail chaplain.

Most of his career was in teaching others, and this isn't much different. Much of what he taught, then and now, was about respect -- how to earn it and offer it.

Inmates also learn about rehabilitation programs like Oxford House, education options like Columbia Basin College's high school equivalency program, and how to regain their driver's license.

Outside of usual life skills, students learn how to break the chain of actions that lead them back to jail.

It's a National Institute of Corrections program called "Thinking for a Change." It teaches inmates how to change the thought patterns that cause them problems.

Another class, titled "The First 192 Hours," takes it name from an inmate's first week out of jail. Volunteers give the class members 192 goals for that first week.

"We tell these guys we're not preparing them to go out on the street again," Wheaton said. "We tell them, 'We're preparing you to live outside, not to live in jail.'"

Not a perfect system

The $38,000 biannual budget for the initiative is paid for with money from the public safety sales tax.

Jail officials said it's open to local, well-behaved male inmates in jail for nonviolent offenses. Excluded are people on federal immigration holds, state Department of Corrections inmates, or prisoners of the U.S. Marshal's Service.

Recidivism is the only way jail staff said they have to measure the initiative's success. However, those staffers only keep track of Benton County bookings, so it's not a clean-cut measurement.

The requirements to enter the class and stay in it are necessary, since the students are free to move from their cell block to the classroom during the day.

It's a level of freedom that can run contrary to what corrections staff normally want, but it's necessary so the participants believe they can succeed in the class, Shelton said.

But getting in isn't a guarantee of success.

Between September and July, they brought 87 well-behaved, non-violent inmates into the class. Of those, 31 never made it to the end.

Another 20 students left the jail before finishing the class.

Those inmates, if they return to the jail, can step right back in where they left off.

"We get those that we believe have the most promise of changing their behavior. ... The guys that we have, they mostly want to go back to their families," Wheaton said. "If we can save one out of every 12 that we have in here. Then it's worth it."

Cameron Probert: 509-582-1402; Twitter: @cameroncprobert

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