Louisiana’s offenders have been put back in the classroom, thanks to a partnership between the LSU AgCenter and the Louisiana Department of Corrections.
The program, which has been developing for the last two years, aims to teach offenders the “soft skills” they require when entering the workforce. Classes the AgCenter offers include workforce development, financial management, anger management and parenting skills, said AgCenter agent Sheri Fair.Workforce ethics is similar to the Character Counts program the center conducts at elementary schools, she said. “It’s based on the same thing we’re teaching children . . . only at an adult’s point of view,” said Fair and AgCenter Extension agent Deborah Cross. Anger management is a required course for many parolees and probationers, and offering it for free helps them fulfill that requirement, LSU AgCenter Extension agent Monica Olinde said.The course would usually cost $500, Fair said.The AgCenter has offered some of these same classes to the public for more than 15 years, Cross said.”We’ve always had these programs. It’s just a different clientele,” she said. Classes are offered every other month to allow more people to attend, said Anthony Simone, district administrator for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections Division of Probation and Parole in Donaldsonville.”They may be somewhat hesitant or resentful that they’re being required to go to the class, but once they see the benefits, they get pretty impressed by it,” Simone said. While some attendants may not take the classes seriously, Olinde says she hopes they result in behavioral changes. “We want them to be successful taxpayers,” Fair said. Evaluations of the classes have been good so far, she said. There are currently 64,953 probationers and parolees in Louisiana; 99 percent are felons, according the Louisiana Department of Corrections Web site. Most of them are between the ages of 25 to 29.”We don’t ask what they’ve done,” Cross said, although some of them volunteer the information. Cross added she’s never felt threatened during a class session.The classes the AgCenter offers are aimed at those on parole and probation, Fair said. Parolees, Fair explained, are those men and women who have been incarcerated and were released early on good behavior or other conditions. Probationers were never sent to prison but have to attend certain classes and maintain a clean record in order to stay out, she said. —-Contact Olga Kourilova at [email protected]