Legislature looks at inmate education

Updated 12:30 p.m., March 18

Members push prison reform: Local 1000 member Instructor John Kern testified at the state legislature March 10 about ways to improve education and rehabilitation programs and reduce California’s recidivism rate – the worst in the nation.

“Inmate education increases public safety by reducing recidivism and it saves the state money in prison costs,” Kern told a joint meeting of the Assembly and Senate public safety committees. “For every dollar we spend on inmate vocational rehabilitation, we can save the taxpayers $3.”  

Kern, a vocational instructor at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, and other Local 1000 representatives also distributed copies of our new white paper “From the Cell to the Classroom.” In that study A Local 1000 researcher spent months visiting prisons and interviewing about 25 members to determine which practices work best at rehabilitating prisoners.

To read the entire report click here.

In interviews and focus groups, many members told a Local 1000 researcher that prison education has improved, but they said the state could do much more. Our supervising cooks urged the state to reinstate a certificate program for inmates that will help ex-convicts find employment.  

“Inmates need something when they leave prison – a skill,” said Gail Abair, a correctional supervising cook at Wasco State Prison. “The only thing that inmates receive for working on the food services crews is a write up … that helps when they go before the parole board but what we really need is a certificate program so that inmates have something to show when they apply for a job.”