By C1 Staff
WEDOWEE — With a goal of only keeping the most serious offenders incarcerated, Randolph County’s community corrections program is becoming a pilot for other counties.
The community corrections program allows for non-violent offenders to re-enter the community under supervision, reports the Randolph Leader.
The Department of Corrections foots the bill for the program, and last year it rang up to $17,350.
Randolph County currently has 61 participants, only four of which are unemployed. Those who struggle to find work end up in the ‘Ready to Work’ program, which offers a training curriculum for offenders with limited education and employment experience.
Only five have been returned to prison for various reasons.
Both a county judge and the DOC must give the OK for offenders to participate in the community corrections program, and Director Becky Farmer says the community corrections program offers more supervision than if the offenders were simply paroled.
Farmer says that if she calls participants in the program and if they don’t return her call within a few hours, they are considered escapees.
Background checks are run on already incarcerated inmates who are potential candidates for the program; those who are sentenced from the bench can also be sent directly to community corrections instead of jail.
Requirements of the program include being employed full time, paying all court fines, remaining current on child support, reporting in person to their supervisor each week with some inmates reporting in daily by phone, clean drug screens, submitting to searches of residences and vehicles, submitting to home visits, abiding by a 9 p.m. curfew, and those participating in the program may not leave the state or the county without permission.
Community officials have been supportive of the program thus far, and those who have participated in it say it helps to provide structure and guidance toward getting their lives back on track.
Currently Farmer is seeking ankle bracelets for offenders who may have broken rules and those who may be at a higher risk of recidivism. Those who wear the bracelets would be charged for their use.
Alabama prison facilities are designed for 13,500 inmates but are currently holding more than 25,000. The largest prisons in the state are filled to three times their design capacity, and Alabama current incarcerates 31,437 inmates inside of state prisons.