New Help for Jail Inmates

One good thing has come out of the overcrowded conditions in the Orange County Jail system: vocational education programs and job counseling for prisoners.

The new program, which will graduate its first class of 50 students in a few weeks, is not so much an attempt at rehabilitation as it is an effort to give prisoners a better self-image and provide them with some skills and incentive for going straight and avoiding a return visit to the overcrowded jail system.

Prisoners in county lockups aren’t in custody long enough for real rehabilitative efforts, but that’s no reason to treat their incarceration strictly as punishment aimed at keeping them locked up and off the street.

Wisely, Sheriff Brad Gates and his staff realized that sitting around a jail cell was a waste of time and opportunity for the inmates and for the public. So the Sheriff’s Department, which operates the county jails, entered into a contract with Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana to provide training classes for men and women inmates in sewing, welding and other courses.

Initially the program is being made available only to minimum-security prisoners at the branch jails. It should be expanded for all prisoners, including those held in the central jail in Santa Ana. The vocational courses are as popular as they are practical. Classes are barely a month old, and they are at capacity, with a waiting list.

The courses provide job training and a college certificate on completion. Even though the students are jail inmates, they are considered to be part-time college students--no different than if they were attending classes on the college’s main campus.

Most important, the courses provide prisoners with a salable skill, the help of college career placement counselors, and the chance of a real new start in which the prospect of jobs replaces jails in their future.