By Griffith Waller, Deputy Director for Governmental Affairs
Uniontown, Ala. – On Friday, the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, J.F. Ingram State Technical College and members of the Perry County Commission celebrated the latest class of graduates from the PREP Center, which provides reentry and rehabilitation services for probationers and parolees statewide.
“Our goal is to provide programs that prepare our participants for success in life – whether that means securing skills that lead to good-paying jobs or offering effective treatments to tackle mental health or substance use issues,” Bureau Director Cam Ward said. “We want to ensure that anyone given a second chance in Alabama will do the most with that opportunity. PREP helps us do just that by delivering the tools and knowledge for graduates to contribute to their communities.”
51 justice-involved individuals completed a variety of reentry programs that included mental health and substance use counseling and job training in CDL, fiber-optics installation and construction equipment operation over the past 90 days at the PREP Center in Perry County.
Perry County Commission Chairman Albert Turner, Jr. congratulated the graduates and explained the significance of the facility to the community. He thanked Governor Kay Ivey, Alabama State Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton and Director Ward for believing in redemption and basing the program in Perry County: “The only avenue we had to turn this place from an empty facility into a productive operation is because someone believed in redemption.”
Through a combination of the PREP Center and Day Reporting Centers, 321 individuals on probation or parole have graduated from Bureau reentry programming. Participants at PREP have completed approximately 2,000 hours of coursework focused on life skills, career readiness, community service, GED attainment and vocational training. No graduate of the PREP Center has reoffended or returned to prison.
“To the counselors: a special thank you to the lessons you taught us in moral recognition,” PREP graduate Joseph Goodwin said. “Without those lessons we would still be prisoners in our own prisons. The last 90 days have taught us how to rethink positively, how to express ourselves in a constructive manner, and we’ve received multiple skills such as fiber optics, skid-steer loader operations and core life skills.”
Opened on April 21, 2022, the PREP Center encourages incarceration diversion as a sanction response and is an option for justice-involved individuals to receive support services and resolve barriers to successful reintegration. The primary program providers at the PREP Center are GEO Group under the advisement of the Alabama Department of Mental Health, J.F. Ingram State Technical College, and Alabama Power.
The model has been recognized nationally for its innovation – most recently as a finalist for the State Transformation in Action Recognition by the Council of State Governments. The number of Alabamians directly impacted by the Bureau’s reentry work will continue to grow as a new class at the PREP Center commenced Monday morning with the tentative graduation scheduled for December 20, 2024.
