By Josh Poltilove
Tampa Tribune
POLK CITY, Fla. — Warden Rod James asked the busload of arriving inmates to raise their hands if they had been incarcerated at least once before.
Of the 50 men on the bus, 49 raised a hand.
For James, that exercise illustrated a simple truth: Prisons can keep criminals off the streets, but they’re not doing enough to change behavior. “We need to take a different approach, see if we can’t keep people from coming back.”
The Department of Corrections is trying to do that with an experiment at the recently opened Demilley Correctional Institution in Polk City.
Demilley, a former Department of Juvenile Justice site, has been converted into Florida’s first transitional re-entry prison.
Inmates receive computer skills training, education and substance abuse counseling. They are taught life skills and receive 100 hours of transitional training, learning everything from how to complete a job application to how to interview for a job. Classes include information on institutionalization and breaking the cycle.
The prison eventually plans to teach inmates culinary skills. The idea is that an ex-con with marketable job skills will have less reason to return to crime.
No small task. In Florida, 32 percent of inmates return to prison within three years.
James said the state Department of Corrections hasn’t given him a statistical goal for the program. But, he says, any reduction in the recidivism rate will help.
“One of the things Secretary Walter McNeil asked is, ‘Do we want to be a department of incarceration or a Department of Corrections?’” James said. “I think everybody who works in this prison has to have a different mind-set. This prison is a great experiment.”
In addition to the public safety aspect of the program, James said, there’s hope that taxpayers will spend less if Demilley succeeds.
When James started with the corrections department more than 30 years ago, Florida had 20 prisons. Now the state has about 60 prisons, with plans for 19 more. Each prison costs the state about $100 million to build. Each inmate costs taxpayers about $19,300 a year.
Florida has about 99,400 prison inmates. That’s roughly the population of Lakeland.
“We can’t keep building our way out of this problem,” said Franchatta Barber, assistant secretary of re-entry for the corrections department.
Polk County was chosen to be the first location for a transitional re-entry prison because the prison system gets such strong volunteer support there, Barber said. If the program works, she said, the corrections department would like one such prison in each of Florida’s four regions.
Inmates began arriving late last year at Demilley, a medium-security prison. About 270 inmates are on-site, and soon there will be 384. Their ages, education levels and criminal offenses run the gamut.
Demilley’s inmates are required to have three years or less left behind bars.
Inmate Joshua Coyne, 29, of Port Charlotte, has about 21/2 years to go. He burglarizing homes. He says he had a drug problem at the time.
Now he hopes to take advantage of the computer training Demilley has to offer so he can work for his father as an insurance adjuster.
“I’m a prime example of what they’re trying to do here,” he said. “I don’t know much about computers. I’m going to get a job, and knowing how to use computers is going to give me a step up.”
Inmate Matthew Rodriguez, 36, of Tarpon Springs, has about 18 months left in prison. He’s using that time to hone his computer skills.
“It’s a therapeutic community,” he said of Demilley. “It’s giving you a different outlook than other prisons.”
Rodriguez wants to get a certification with computers. But he’s not positive what career field he wants to enter when he leaves Demilley.
“I’m not really sure at this point,” he said. “It all depends on what I get out of this.”
Copyright 2009 Tampa Tribune