By Marian Galbraith
Tullahoma News
COFFEE COUNTY, — Due to the overwhelming success of Franklin County’s Community Re-entry program, an educational and rehabilitative program for prison inmates started in 2007, five inmates from the Coffee County jail are taking college-level computer classes onsite in a classroom adjacent to the old jail.
Under the direction of Christine Hopkins, an award-winning rehabilitation counselor with the Tennessee Department of Human Services, Franklin County’s Community Re-Entry program has yielded a 15-to-one return on investment of grant funds to train, coach, and place inmates into productive jobs upon their release.
Hopkins said she calculates this return by adding the money saved through reduced incarcerations plus the wages earned by participants upon their release, divided by the money invested in the program.
Thanks to her success in Franklin County, additional funding from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance was recently provided to expand the programs into Coffee and Warren counties via Middle Tennessee Rural Re-Entry, the non-profit corporation Hopkins helped establish last year.
“By placing these individuals into paying jobs upon their release, we’re not only reducing the cost of housing inmates in our county jails, but also turning them into productive, taxpaying citizens,” Hopkins said.
“I’m delighted that we’re expanding into Coffee and Warren counties, and I look forward to working with both to make these programs successful on a regional scale.”
Full story: Successful re-entry program changing lives at Coffee Co. Jail