NCJ Number
167790
Journal
Corrections Today Volume: 58 Issue: 5 Dated: (August 1996) Pages: 84,86-87
Date Published
1996
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article describes four exemplary programs that use private-sector and government cooperation to provide vocational training for offenders and needed services for the community.
Abstract
The Kansas Department of Corrections maintains a cooperative arrangement with the City of Topeka that allows female inmates from the Topeka Correctional Facility to participate in housing renovation work. Low-income citizens qualify to occupy the homes built, and inmates learn on-the-job construction skills and develop a useful work ethic. A second program, Project TRADE, provides training, restitution, apprenticeship, development, and education for minimum-security offenders and ex-offenders; this constitutes pre-apprenticeship construction skills training. Project TRADE is the brainchild of The Home Builders Institute, the Nation's leading source for education and training programs that serve the home building industry. A third program, Operation Outward Reach Inc., is a 24-year-old nonprofit organization that subcontracts with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections at five prisons to provide year-round carpentry and masonry vocational training in the community. The program includes low- cost construction work for senior citizens and other economically disadvantaged populations and nonprofit organizations. The final project, The Recycled Mobile Home Project, uses medium- and maximum-security inmates to renovate mobile homes. The inmates gain construction training, homeless and low-income persons receive homes they can afford, and mobile home dealers who donate homes are relieved of the landfill dilemma when recycling is accomplished. Contact persons for each program are listed.