KY jail program lets inmates get jobs before release: ‘I felt special for the first time’

Four years, three months and 13 days.

That’s how long Deidra Stearns said she spent in county jail — an experience she characterized as “very depressing” and “very lonely.”

“You feel evicted from the world,” Stearns said. “You don’t feel like you’re a part of anything, you feel like you’re worthless. There’s nothing to do. You sit there and you think. That’s the hardest part, you analyze and overanalyze.”

Stearns was incarcerated at the Rowan County Detention Center in Morehead until she finished her sentence in September. But for about the final year of her sentence, Stearns was asked to be the guinea pig for a new jail program — one that in the long run would give her and others a sense of hope, a paying job and money in her bank account when she was released.

The new program, which started in Rowan County a little over a year ago, gave qualified inmates the ability to get jobs at local businesses and have their paychecks deposited in bank accounts, said Wes Coldiron, the county jailer.

“They go out into the community,” Coldiron said. “They work just like me and you. They’re treated just like me and you.”

‘The best employees’

Interested employers interviewed potential employees in the jail. Then the jail opened bank accounts for those employed and provided daily transportation to and from their respective workplaces, Coldiron said. If someone owed child support, a portion of their paycheck would automatically go toward paying that back.

For an inmate to be eligible for the program, they can’t be a violent felony offender and they can’t have committed a sex crime, Dylan Lambert, the director of operations for the county’s fiscal court, said.

Stearns was the first at the jail to go through the program, starting in August 2021 at Holbrook’s Embroidery Plus, a local Main Street business that has done embroidery, screen printing, signs and banners for 23 years. Owners Kari and Cameron Flanders said they’re very happy with their new, steady stream of potential employees.

“By far, they’ve been the best employees we’ve ever had in 23 years,” Cameron said.

These days, finding good employees is “so hard,” he said. Including Stearns, the Flanders have so far been able to employ four people from the jail. Part of what makes them good employees, Cameron said, is that they’d rather work than return to jail and “they don’t have a cell phone.”

Transitioning from jail to a work environment is no easy task, Kari said. They brought their employees along one step at a time, starting them in the back, then eventually working with customers, building confidence along the way.

“The day you say, ‘You’re going to answer the phone now,’ that was huge,” Kari said.

Making the initial jump from jail to job was hard but ultimately rewarding.

“I’ve never been a people person,” Stearns said. “I’ve always been very shy, very insecure and when they picked me out of the jail to be the first one, I felt special for the first time ever.”

A few months after Stearns started at Holbrook’s, she was joined by Brandy Moore. The pair shared a cell in the Rowan County jail and Moore took to the job as well. Both said they’re thankful that the Flanders have treated them like family, not inmates.

“I feel like a normal person and they’ve always made me feel that way,” Moore said. “And I think that’s the biggest thing, not making me feel like I’m alone.”

After finishing her time in prison in September, Stearns kept working at Holbrook’s and moved into an apartment above the shop. When Moore finished her two-and-half-year sentence at the beginning of December, she joined Stearns in another apartment above the store.

“We’re not just the girls from jail,” Moore said.

There were over 20 inmates involved in the program in November and so far feedback from the business community has been overwhelmingly positive, said Lambert. The program is budget friendly with much of the cost going toward the gas needed to transport program participants to and from their work places.

According to Coldiron, the jail gets a list of those who are eligible from the state Department of Corrections.

‘Somebody’s got to give them a second chance’

The idea for the program came from Simpson County, where a similar program started up at the county jail. Rowan County Judge-Executive Harry Clark and Lambert helped to install the program in Morehead, Coldiron said.

The work-release programs were made possible by a state law passed in 2017, Katherine Williams, the state Department of Corrections’ communications manager, wrote in an email. Ten different county jails have inmates working under the program.

The current success of the Rowan County program comes as Gov. Andy Beshear announced a Prison to Work Pipeline program in early November that aims to connect inmates with potential employers before their release. Coldiron said that Rowan County’s program isn’t related.

Still the premise of both programs is similar: An inmate is less likely to return to jail if they’ve got a paying job and the means to build a life separate from the one that led to prison. Plus, local businesses reap the benefits of an expanded workforce.

Among academic studies, there is no firm conclusion on whether work-exchange programs reduce recidivism, said Betsy Matthews, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who studies community corrections and rehabilitation. Generally those studies haven’t had strong enough research methodologies to actually attribute the observed effects to the programs themselves, Matthews said.

But work-release programs do increase the odds of having or getting employment after release.

“That factor in and of itself would give us reason to believe that work release programs have the capacity for lower recidivism,” Matthews said.

The type of job and work environment could also play a factor, Matthews said. An inmate with a stable, decent paying job where they’re “surrounded by pro-social individuals” would increase the likelihood of post-release success.

Kentucky has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world and anything that can be done to get people out of often over-crowded local jails should be pursued, Matthews said.

Overall the state’s recidivism rate has been steadily decreasing in recent years, the 2021 annual report from the state’s Department of Corrections shows.

In 2021, the recidivism rate was down to 29.17% — a historic low and down significantly from the 44.56% the state registered in 2016. The department defines recidivism as the re-incarceration of a former inmate in a state facility within 24 months of their release.

The program in Rowan County hasn’t been active long enough to have enough data to determine whether recidivism rates are lowered because of it, Coldiron said. But he’s happy with its start.

“They’re good people,” said Lambert of many of the inmates in the county jail. “I just want to hammer that home, they’re good people that have made a mistake, and somebody’s got to give them a second chance.”