When Dora Schriro took over the Corrections Department in 2003, she brought with her a philosophy of correcting inmate behavior and imparting on them the skills needed to succeed known as “parallel universe.”

The idea, she says, is to make as many aspects of prison life as much like life in the outside world — the one the prisoners came from and the one they will return to — as possible.

“It’s pressing a population to pull up their socks, wipe their nose and take care of themselves,” the DOC director says.

The success of Arizona Correctional Industries and the impact it is having on inmate behavior is a piece in the parallel universe puzzle that department officials say is having far-reaching effects.

Many of the state’s 33,000 or so prisoners have substance abuse problems and lack even a high school education. In order to reduce the three Rs that rear their heads in the corrections world — relapse, revocation and recidivism — DOC has made strides in recent years to give inmates the tools needed to avoid those pitfalls.

State statute mandates that all prisoners need to have a basic education when they leave the prison system, but Ms. Schriro says past years saw thousands of inmates waiting to get into the educational program to get their GED.

In fiscal year 2002, 791 inmates received their high school equivalency certificates; in 2004, that number nearly doubled, to 1,439. In the most recent fiscal year that ended June 30, DOC Work Force Development Administrator Charles Flanagan said the department easily surpassed its goal of 2,200 GEDs, as 3,125 inmates finished the program.

“And that’s with no additional resources and fewer teachers,” he said.

Mr. Flanagan, who heads ACI, says the company — although it is statutorily enabled and overseen by the state, law requires it be self-sufficient, profitable and run like a real-world business — has played a crucial role in giving inmates a chance to succeed in life.

Coveted Jobs

ACI is, essentially, the top of the prison employment food chain for inmates. While the menial jobs — like cleaning the prisons, doing laundry and working in the kitchen — are available to most inmates in WIPP, or the Work Incentive Pay Program, inmates are only paid between 10 and 50 cents an hour.

Those who qualify to work for ACI, however, learn real-world skills and produce a real-world product while working, in many cases, for companies outside the prison walls. Even within the program, there is a hierarchy: working for one of the 27 ACI owned and operated crews, producing everything from cabinetry to park benches to license plates, earns a prisoner 40 to 80 cents an hour; working under an ACI labor contract with an outside company, such as Hickman’s Eggs or Eurofresh produce, averages a wage of $2 an hour. The highest rung on the ACI ladder is the smaller Prison Industry Enterprise Certified Program, or PIECP, in which the inmates earn the prevailing wage for the job they are doing, as set by the Department of Economic Security, and even pay taxes, room and board and contribute to a retirement account.

GEDs Come Before Work Assignments

Unlike in the past, when inmates could receive the work-based education training that is a part of ACI employment without receiving a GED, prisoners are now required to have their high school equivalency before they can be eligible. That is incentive enough for the inmates, many of whom strive to get the skills and earn higher wages, Ms. Schriro says.

ACI helps address a problem that is inherent to prison systems across the country, Mr. Flanagan says: the transition from prison life to the outside world is often not addressed until the prisoner is released.

Life On The Outside

“What happens is these inmates get out with $50 in their pockets, a pair of blue jeans and a blue chambray shirt,” the former warden of the state’s Tucson and Douglas prisons said. “They have no job, nowhere to live, no car to get to a job. They’re doomed to fail.”

Under the current system, he says working on transitioning the prisoners as soon as they enter the system. Mr. Flanagan likens it to each inmate receiving a passport when they enter prison: if the prisoner has a substance abuse problem, then he must get his passport stamped saying he has completed treatment; if the inmate has no education, she must get her GED stamp; and so on.

By giving inmates an education, they immediately become eligible for hosts of jobs they never would have been qualified for. By giving them sobriety, they don’t fall into the same chemical traps that may have let them to prison in the first place. By giving them a vocational skill, they can land employment that allows them to provide for themselves and their families.

On the job skill front, Mr. Flanagan says ACI has partnered with community colleges and companies to build up work-based education. For example, Rio Salado Community College has partnered with the state and trains the women at Perryville prison in vehicle repair. Not only do the inmates now service the prison’s entire vehicle fleet in-house, they also receive ASE certification, enabling them to get jobs in the community upon release.

Swift Transportation, whose headquarters is in southwest Phoenix, contracts with the state for inmates at Lewis prison to perform repairs to all of the tractor trailer trucks it owns.

All said, there are 1,819 inmates participating in ACI work programs.

“It’s a pretty small percentage,” ACI General Manager Bill Branson says, “but we get the cream of the crop.”

Although it is unconventional to think of prisoners in that respect, Mr. Flanagan echoes that thought.

“They’re people who have made mistakes,” he said. “Some of them have amazing skills.” —