Seven years later, Jacobs, a Capitol Heights resident, runs his own construction company and volunteers as a counselor for a drug rehabilitation program – a dramatic change he said was possible because of prison rehabilitation programs.

"My life before I went to jail, my life before Jesus was hell," said Jacobs, 29. "I have been redeemed, and it came first of all as a result of meeting Jesus, and also through the [drug rehabilitation] program."

But Jacobs, like many prison outreach leaders and jail officials, said he worries that some of the programs at the Prince George's County Correctional Center in Upper Marlboro designed to help inmates readjust to life outside the prison and prevent them from reoffending will be cut as the county government struggles to close a projected $132 million deficit.

County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) has warned that inmate reintegration services might be among the casualties if up to 500 county employees are laid off to close the budget gap, according to county documents presented to the Maryland Senate's Budget and Taxation Committee in January.

Johnson argued in February that a controversial property tax increase was needed to avoid the layoffs. A bill authorizing the tax increase has been held up in the Maryland General Assembly, and county officials hope money from the federal stimulus package will make the hike unnecessary, said county spokesman John Erzen.

"[The budget] is obviously a very fluid situation," Erzen said. "There could very well be cuts, but it's a little too early to say where they'll be or what they'll look like."

Prison spokeswoman Vicki Duncan said the corrections system will try to avoid cutting programs but added that the focus will be on maintaining security at the jail.

"We all know there's a possibility that there will be some cuts," she said. "If you know jails, you know that safety is a priority."

At least four prison programs have been suspended in recent years, Duncan said. The jail stopped sending ex-inmates to Leslie's House, a halfway house for women, in 2008 because the prison could not afford to send guards to protect the home and surrounding community. Building Bridges, another transitional program, was cut last year after it lost funding from the state government, she said.

Efforts to replace a car repair instructor who left several years ago also came to a halt in 2008 after Johnson imposed a hiring freeze on county agencies, and a program where non-violent offenders tended a small garden has been suspended because of a lack of resources, she said.

Duncan said the prison is trying to bring back many of those programs and stressed that further cuts are not certain.

Research suggests that prison programs, especially job training programs, can make it easier for inmates to find work after they are released, improve the quality of their lives and make them less dangerous for their communities, said Faye Taxman, a former University of Maryland, College Park professor who has studied state prison programs.

Job training programs can reduce recidivism rates – the percentage of ex-inmates who are rearrested – by as much as 20 percent, Taxman said.

Cuts "would just fuel further incarceration," Taxman said. "You basically would have more people with less work experience."

Taxman also said job training and other prison programs increase prisoners' sense of self-worth and improve their behavior, making them less disruptive while they are still incarcerated.

Carl Felton, a reverend at First Baptist Church of Highland Park in Landover and the director of his church's prison ministry, agreed.

"To cut a job program for an ex-offender, it's like cutting off his arms, his legs and gagging him," said Felton, who noted that it is hard even for people with clean criminal records to find work in the current economic climate.

"Most people do not want to hire an ex-offender," Felton said.