Indiana setting the bar for teaching inmates job skills

PLAINFIELD, Ind. (WISH) – Indiana officials say other states are looking to Indiana when it comes to teaching prison inmates job skills while they’re still behind bars.

Officials with the Indiana Department of Corrections say an official from Texas will visit Indiana next week to take a look at our state’s prison apprenticeship program.

They’ve also received visits from officials in Arkansas, Tennessee, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Illinois, and Oregon. Officials say they’ve shared conference calls or information with a dozen other states.

IDOC officials say Indiana has the largest prison apprenticeship program in the country.

Inmates apply, and are able to earn US Department of Labor Apprenticeship certification: the same certification an individual could receive outside working in the US Department of Labor apprenticeship programs.

“We would like for the men and women who work for us, that if they get released and they’re not getting out of bed every morning, it doesn’t feel right. It feels unnatural. I should be getting up; I should be going to work,” said Doug Evans, Indiana Department of Corrections Operations ReEntry Manager with PEN, Indiana’s Prison Enterprises Network.

Evans says the apprenticeships have written work processes, a set number of hours inmates work, and related classroom training.

Right now, Evans says there are about 2,500 to 2,600 men and women across the state registered in the apprenticeship program.

The goal is to not only instill that work ethic, he says, but to give them marketable job skills to help inmates land a job when they are released.

For example, at the Plainfield Correctional Facility, there are about 170 work training opportunities.

In one warehouse, offenders work to prepare commissary orders for other inmates across the state. Each person has a set job to do, whether that’s work the swing lift, fill orders, quality control, or help to ship them out.

Other offenders work in career development training, helping inmates learn how to prepare for interviews, how to budget and use banks, even how to learn a “mock” email.

“We strongly encourage the offenders to say look, you’ve been in one of the toughest environments around, you chose to get out of bed every morning and go to work, you completed job training, and you know these skills. So go out and sell yourselves,” said Evans.

“We’ve got to give these people an opportunity to work. Ninety-seven percent of people who are incarcerated do get released from prison. They’re going to live in our communities, they’re going to be around our kids, around our schools, they’re going to be walking up the streets, down the streets where we are. If we don’t give them a chance to get employed, then we know what’s going to happen,” Evans added.

Evans says he would like to see the program expand in Indiana as well. He’d like to do more with companies who may employ these offenders, to better prepare them for once they’re released.

Eventually, he says he’d like to be able to conduct job interviews in prison, so offenders know when they get out – they’ve got a job.

Fifty-two-year-old Chester Kardel is just days away from his release date. He says he’s served nearly ten years in prison.

“I was a train wreck prior to coming to prison. I feel it was a godsend to have me be here,” Kardel said. “Had I not been here, I probably would not be on earth. That’s the best way I could probably put it.”

Kardel currently works one of the forklifts in the warehouse in the Plainfield prison. He says he’s hoping to land a job doing something like that when he’s released.

“I have two daughters I so dearly love and miss, and I owe it not only on them, but to myself to make sure I do change, which I have,” Kardel said.

Twenty-seven-year-old inmate Darryl Goodwin feels the same. He works now in the Plainfield prison as a career development facilitator, teaching other inmates career skills.

“Everybody deserves a second chance. Not everybody’s the same,” Goodwin said. “Just go out there and be productive, and there’s a less chance of coming back.”

Leonard Brickhouse is a second-time offender, and is currently serving time for drug dealing.

He says the work training program in prison now, is helping.

“It keeps me focused, it keeps me grounded, and it takes me out of the element of being in prison. It gives me something to do,” said Brickhouse.

As far as once he is released, “You have to stay focused on your drive. Switch your people, places and things. That’s the number one key to me.”