Official: Prisons should be ‘training centers’ not punitive
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mary Johnson felt her self-confidence take a hit when she was imprisoned in Mississippi in 2012.
Johnson had gone to school for accounting and worried that the stigma of serving prison time would prevent her from working again or having a normal life.
That changed when she got a job during her incarceration as an assistant to the director of administration at Mississippi Prison Industries Corporation, a nonprofit company that offers workforce training to incarcerated people. When she was released after 2 and 1/2 years, the company offered her a permanent job: She’s now the director of administration herself.
“People make mistakes, but that mistake should not follow you around for the rest of your life — that should not be your title, that should not be your name,” she said Thursday at “Dollars & Sense of Second Chance Hiring,” a forum hosted by Right on Crime, a conservative group that seeks changes in the U.S. justice system.
Business leaders, law enforcement officers, policy groups and government officials met at the Two Mississippi Museums to discuss ways to reduce recidivism and barriers to formerly incarcerated people having healthy, stable lives after prison.
A top Mississippi corrections official said he no longer wants prisons to be seen as punitive institutions, but as “training centers” where people build skills that can help them find employment and maintain stable relationships once they are released.
“The punishment is deprivation of liberty — let’s not add to it in other ways. We want to help them get better,” said Pedro Morena, deputy commissioner for division programs, education, re-entry and vocational rehabilitation at the Mississippi Department of Corrections.