March 10, 200 — For most college students, spring break is synonymous with freedom. But for 21 students at Mendocino College this year, going to school is a break: from their lives as inmates at the county jail.
William Feather is the inmate services coordinator, which is a civilian position. He’s been a champion of the local Corrections to College program since well before it launched in August of 2019. Through the adult school, he says the jail can now offer high school education to inmates in all eight houses of the facility. And with realignment, a lot of inmates stay in county jails long enough that he’d like to eventually offer them the opportunity to pursue four-year degrees. For now, though, he says, “It’s really a beautiful thing to see people live life again while in custody...I think one of the things that higher education has done for people and has historically meant to people is, you get to make more money, right? And a lot of cases, with a lot of our clients here in the facility, they’re people of color. And they’ve been prevented from a seat at the table, historically. So it’s a dream they always had when they were younger, but they just never were invited let alone thought they could ever do it when they're being booked into the Mendocino County jail.”
Captain Tim Pearce, the jail commander, says the jail is moving away from "the warehousing of people to the building of people." But, he adds, in addition to work skills, a lot of inmates need to learn the basic skills it takes to hold down a regular, legitimate job. And, with restitution payments that sometimes reach $15,000, he and Kate Feigin, the coordinator of the Corrections to College program, believe it’s essential to get former inmates into the workforce as soon as they can.
Feigin is a Mendocino College faculty member who comes to the jail two days a week to work with the students. The program is funded through grants and scholarships, community donations, and the inmates themselves, through the inmate welfare fund from telephone calls and commissary purchases. Inmate students take online classes at the jail, and get work study credits through the agriculture department by working in the jail garden. But Feigin said she’s focused on classes that will spruce up their resumes, including human services classes, which can prepare them for work as counselors, helping people who have had experiences similar to their own. In late February, she was working on getting welding classes and a developing a culinary arts curriculum, with a view toward getting more instructors into the jail to work with the students.
Lieutenant John Bednar, who is in charge of inmate services at the jail, is heavily involved in selecting the candidates he thinks will be most successful. So far, 56 of them have gone through the program, with 5% recidivism. Right now, the criteria includes minimum security inmates, though he doesn’t think it’s entirely inconceivable that more problematic inmates could benefit from the program in the future. And he expects that the new wing, designed to serve mentally ill and violent detainees, will “take some of the pressure” off of the older building, freeing up room for classes.
The new wing is scheduled to open in 2021. Last week, Kate Feigin told kzyx she expects inmate students to enroll in the first culinary class at the end of March. And welding in the fall, if she can pull it off.