Yuma News Now

Yuma, Arizona - Yuma County Sheriff, Ralph E. Ogden, announced the Sheriff’s Office has received an additional grant for its Prisoner Re-entry Initiative Program. The grant received from the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, provides for Post Release Services. This is the second grant received by the Sheriff’s Office which is one of 23 agencies across the United States participating in the Prisoner Re-entry Initiative Program.

Earlier this year the Sheriff’s Office received a grant from the Department of Justice, and those funds were used to establish a partnership with Community Intervention Associates, to provide pre-release services at the Yuma County Detention Center. Pre release services include programs such as “Getting it Right” which has increased its participation rate from 2 to 45 prisoners. Prisoners who attend learn about making positive life choices when facing barriers such as drug abuse, and anger management which often contributes to the jail’s recidivism rate.

Sheriff Ogden has committed his staff to provide vocational and life skills training to prisoners as part of the Detention Center’s education programs. These new funds received from the DOL will be used to provide additional services to prisoners returning to the community such as workforce development, job training, counseling and other re-entry services.

During the past three years, congressional appropriations have supported the work in 20 states through a series of pilot programs awarded to community and faith-based organizations by the U.S. Department of Labor. The early efforts have fielded promising results. In the first two years of the program, more than 12,800 offenders have enrolled in the prisoner re-entry program. More 7,900 have been placed in jobs. Only 18 percent of those enrolled in the program have been arrested again within a year - that’s less than half the national average recidivism rate.