By JOEL DRESANG
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
TAYCHEEDAH, Wis. — In a wing at Taycheedah Correctional Institution near Fond du Lac, women inmates are sculpting dentures from acrylic resins. They’re meticulously contouring and buffing and waxing plastic into functional prostheses.
They’re not just biding their time. They’re plying a trade.
“I could see myself going into this,” said Amber Haviland, an inmate from Wausau.
Between fears that employers are going to lack skilled workers and concerns over record prison populations, attention is turning to inmates for work force development.
* Last week, President Bush signed the Second Chance Act, nearly unanimously passed in Congress, which raises rehabilitation as a priority in the justice system and authorizes $165 million a year to help inmates succeed after they’re released. Part of the program is modeled after a federal Prison Re-Entry Initiative involving Milwaukee’s Word of Hope Ministries Inc.
* Next month, the Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board begins a one-year $400,000 pilot to train and employ workers with little job experience, putting special emphasis on recently released inmates - dozens of whom return to the community weekly.
* As part of a four-city, $5.4 million experiment by the Joyce Foundation, Milwaukee’s New Hope Project is using job subsidies to help parolees make the transition from imprisonment to employment.
“Whatever our feelings are about people who commit crimes, our public safety and our economic well-being are better served by making sure they have employable skills,” said Julie Kerksick, executive director of New Hope.
At Taycheedah, authorities hope that inmates training to be dental laboratory technicians will, after they’re released, find decent jobs that keep them from returning.
“To be able to be law-abiding citizens when they get out there, they have to make a wage and take care of their families,” said Cathy Jess, Taycheedah’s warden. “So that’s important that they get a job skill, and we prepare them for that day that they step back out there. We all want them to be successful when they get out there because they’re going to be our neighbors.”
Dental lab techs earn nearly $37,000 a year on average statewide, and more than $40,000 in Milwaukee County, according to Department of Workforce Development data.
Inmates cost the state almost $30,000 a year, according to the Department of Corrections, and more than $36,000 at Taycheedah.
“That is an expense to us, and it’s in the state’s best interest to invest in getting individuals trained,” said Roberta Gassman, secretary of the Department of Workforce Development.
The dental lab tech program at Taycheedah began three years ago as a joint venture involving the departments of Corrections and Workforce Development and Moraine Park Technical College, which certifies the instruction. Not counting overhead, the program cost nearly $48,000 in supervision, supplies and services last year.
Not only can the training improve inmates’ employment prospects, but production from the lab takes a bite out of the state’s costs for prisoner dental care.
Once trained, inmates can work in Taycheedah’s lab making dentures for other state inmates. Prosthetics made at Taycheedah cost the state from 18% to 81% of what it would pay a private dental lab for the same work, said Barbara De Lap, dental director for the Department of Corrections.
The savings help sustain the dental lab tech program, said Gary Grueter, Taycheedah’s education director.
Last year, the Taycheedah lab produced 260 out of the more than 1,100 dentures that Wisconsin provided to inmates - a number that’s expected to grow with the aging of the prison population.
Rise in opportunities
In fact, the graying of America is what’s behind the rise in opportunities for dental lab techs, and fewer schools appear to be offering training, said Prof. Gerald Ziebert, director of the prosthodontics program at the Marquette University School of Dentistry.
Robert Popp, president of Popp Dental Laboratory Inc., helped design and equip the Taycheedah lab and is employing two of the program’s first graduates while they’re on work release.
“The two that we have hired are still in the prison system, and I’m sure that this has presented them an opportunity to be out of that environment,” said Popp, who has facilities in Racine and Greendale.
“I found these people to be very energetic and (have) a great attitude when they come to work because their other option isn’t that great,” Popp said. “They’re very focused on what they do.”
At the Taycheedah lab, Haviland shows pride in her work as she patiently adjusts a set of upper dentures to match a set of lowers.
“It breaks up the monotony and the tedium of the day because everything’s the same thing every day. It helps you expand your horizons,” said Haviland, who arrived at Taycheedah last August on a burglary conviction and has a release date of 2011.
“It’s good to be productive in prison. Not just come here and waste time, you know?” Haviland said. “I’ve wasted enough of my time.”
JSOnline.com For a video report on the dental assistant program at Taycheedah and links to an occupational profile for dental lab technicians, go to www.jsonline.com/links
Copyright 2008, Journal Sentinel Inc.