Articles & News

March 25, 2008

Inmates in Clark County easing back into life on the outside

Clark County jail work-release program gives offenders new opportunity
By MELISSA MOODY, Melissa.Moody@newsandtribune.com

With his crew-cut hair, collared sweater and leather loafers, Mickey Moran doesn’t fit the cinematic description of a jail inmate.

But at the Michael L. Becher Adult Corrections Complex, he is one of 14 “clients” working off the last years or months of their sentences.

Clients are what correction officers who are employed at the jail’s Work Release Center call inmates. The center opened Jan. 7, and the first inmate began working outside the facility — at an independent employer like any person off the street — the third week of the same month.

Moran was convicted of drunken driving and evading the police Feb. 14, “Valentine’s Day,” he said with a rueful smile. “I just had one bad day where I drank too much.”

So he will work off the rest of his six-month sentence on the third floor of the county jail, living a mostly normal life with the exception of spending the night in a bunk with more than a dozen other men behind concrete walls and 300-pound doors.

“I was downstairs (in the jail) for five days two years ago,” Moran said. “Compared to down there, this is a Hilton.”

The work-release program is offered to nonviolent offenders completing the last two years of their sentence, or as in

Moran’s case, serving sentences for offenses with shorter jail terms.

Participants’ charges range from failure to pay child support to repeat driving while intoxicated arrests and the inmates in the program come from Clark County, Floyd County and Washington County.

The work-release center is also on a waiting list with the Indiana Department of Correction to get state prison inmates into the program.

“Most everybody except me (at the center) came from downstairs or prison,” Moran said.

An alternative to a traditional jail sentence, work-release programs allow inmates a much greater measure of freedom than they would have in the typical jail cell. They go to and from work on their own and they are able to run errands as well.

The programs are billed by advocates as a way to more slowly, and cautiously, place prisoners back into society, giving them an opportunity to reintegrate under supervision before achieving the full freedom of release.

“It allows you to ease in, instead of getting out of a cell and being thrown back into it,” Moran said.

With jobs secured before their release, prisoners have a more steady footing in adapting back into everyday life. After beginning work as a stocker at a retail store in Jeffersonville, Moran is now about to be promoted to supervisor and he plans on sticking with the job after his release.

Participants in the program are given 10 days upon their arrival to secure employment, though there are exceptions for those who are actively looking without luck. Inmates in the program work in anything from factory jobs to restaurants to temporary labor.

They must pay the center to work in the program, another part of reintegrating them into life on the outside.

Three participants, one from Floyd County and two from Clark County, have left the program and finished their sentences. The center will check back with each participant a year into their release to see if they have reoffended and how they’re doing on the outside.

Moran currently makes $8 an hour in his position as a stocker, and he pays the center $105 a week in “rent.”

The pay scale is adjusted depending on the amount of money a participant makes each week. Inmates making less than $200 a week are charged $90 a month, and the center will draw 25 percent from inmates making more than $200 a week.

Inmates are also charged $1.50 per meal they are provided at the facility, though they also can eat lunch out while on the job. The $3 million center aims to eventually be self-funded.

There are 13 people in Moran’s pod, but the center can house about 150, with three 36-man dormitories, one 20-woman dorm and a pod to house 20 men for substance abuse and treatment only.

“They need a lot more people in here,” Moran said. “Downstairs just ruins your life. This up here adjusts you to life.”

However, not all the participants in the program are ready for that life. Three have been sent back downstairs for breaking center rules, including drug use. But those who are ready for life outside the jail walls are adjusting well to the at least temporary autonomy they are afforded each day.

“Some people can’t handle the freedom — the people that can’t stop using, they’re better off downstairs,” Moran said. “But (the program) is great for the people that can handle it.”