The Tate County Sheriff’s Office has partnered with Northwest Mississippi Community College to educate inmates and train them to become part of the workforce once released.
Mississippi’s three-year recidivism rate, the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested, is 36.8% — or 23rd in the nation. Studies show that the more highly educated inmates are, the less likely they are to be locked up multiple times.
According to Tate County Jail Administrator Chad Wicker, prisoners, on average, have up to a seventh-grade education level. Wicker, who newly-elected sheriff Luke Shepherd tabbed to oversee the detention center’s operations, determined that something needed to be done to shut the revolving door of returning inmates while also addressing workforce needs.
Courses are now available for any willing inmate in the north Mississippi correctional facility to give those incarcerated more opportunities to earn a General Educational Development program certificate or even the skills necessary to be a viable contributor in various warehouses.
“North Mississippi is kind of a hub for distribution with warehouses in DeSoto County and all over the Marshall County area, so we created what we call distribution studies or distribution class for the inmates where they can get a certification in forklift and OSHA and basic concepts of distribution, so when they get out, they can get a job and become a productive taxpaying citizen — which is the goal of what we’re trying to do,” Wicker said on Good Things with Rebecca Turner.
In addition, inmates can also go through employability training. This entails educating prisoners on how to draft a proper résumé, dress for a job interview, show up to work on time, and other basic skills to thrive in the workplace.
“All these people are getting out. Very few of them are going to serve a life sentence, so they’re all going to be back in society at some point, so we try to give them the skills to be successful,” Wicker remarked.
Northwest Community College sends instructors to the jail, which resides just under three miles from the school’s main campus in Senatobia, where they provide hands-on training for the inmates in a vocational program.
This training, according to Wicker, is guaranteed to land the incarcerated pupils an occupation the moment they are no longer locked up as Mississippi faces a dire need for forklift operators and warehouse workers.
“We had a forklift donated to our facility, so they get to really work on a forklift moving pallets around and things like that in a secure area. The inmates really enjoy that,” Wicker said. “From talking to people around the area, there’s a 100% chance these guys are going to get a job when they get out if they just go apply for it.”
A round of Tate County inmates have recently graduated from educational courses within the prison and will soon be afforded the opportunity to enter the workforce as free men with the tools to maintain meaningful employment.
Wicker is confident that the emphasis on higher education will bear fruit with those once behind bars for committing various crimes becoming model citizens.
