Inmates taking life-skills classes
Graduation celebrates women who completed jail program
Linda Veasey hurt her grandmother.
Veasey, 34, said it’s her fault that her grandmother has no family or friends she can rely on and has to live in a house with no hot water and poor electricity.
“I never knew how much I could hurt somebody until I’ve seen my grandmother today,” Veasey said during Friday’s ceremony at the Pulaski
County jail. “It broke me, because I see the pain that I have caused this woman. And I am so sorry for everything.”
Veasey’s struggle with drug abuse landed her in jail, where she and others are fighting their vices in hopes of becoming better people.
She was among several inmates who graduated Friday from the Pulaski County sheriff’s office CSI Academy class. CSI stands for community-focused, safety-driven and integrity-based.
Inmates go through 240 classroom hours in the program to help with their transition back into the community once their sentences are completed. Pulaski County Sheriff Eric Higgins said the program is about improving inmates’ lives.
“Sometimes we make mistakes,” Higgins said. “Sometimes we just do things [that are] wrong and we have to be held accountable for those things. But that does not define who we are, and I believe that we need to give people an opportunity to be better.”
The program seeks to buck the trend of parolees and former inmates experiencing a lower quality of life upon their release from prison, which often leads to a return to prison.
A U.S. Justice Department study on recidivism released in May 2018 found that 83%
of 67,966 prisoners released in 2005 were arrested at least once in nine years. Of those prisoners, 44% were arrested in their first year after release.
The Pulaski County sheriff’s office partnered with the Exodus Project, which seeks to educate offenders about life skills, for the program.
“We’re trying to reduce the recidivism rate” in the Pulaski County jail, Higgins said. “If we can reduce the recidivism rate here, we will reduce the recidivism rate throughout the state of Arkansas.”
Participants in the program talked about the hope the class has instilled in them. Higgins said one inmate who returned to finish the course for three weeks after her release gave him hope for other graduates.
“We can give them all the information, but when they start talking about stuff that they’ve learned, then you understand that they’re getting it,” Higgins said. “You know [that] they know that they have hope and can do something different.”
Currently the program is available only to women, but Higgins wants to make it available for men as well.
Inmate and program graduate Cleishia Martin, 22, pleaded guilty to felony terroristic threatening and was sentenced to 36 months in prison Sept. 26, 2019. She said the program has helped her get control of her anger.
“I suffer majorly with my anger and controlling my reaction,” Martin said. “I have different coping skills to turn my anger into something positive.”
Martin said she was placed in the group of women and tasked with learning how to support one another.
“At first it was kind of rough, you know, with the different personalities and attitudes,” Martin said. “So we all learned to come together as one.”
Martin said she hopes to return to college and pursue a business degree after serving her sentence. She wants to help other participants in future classes as well.
“It won’t work unless you are actually wanting to change,” Martin said. “You have to be wanting to change, first of all. You get only as much as you put in.”
Kathy McConnell, a volunteer teacher with the program, said she wants to give inmates the chance her son did not get.
“I had a son who was an opioid addict, and I lost him in August of last year to an overdose,” McConnell said. “We lose 142,000 people per year to a drug overdose. I just heard this morning of another Exodus graduate, 34 years old, who died of an overdose last night.
“We’ve got to get people on the right road.”