CareerTech Program Training Female Inmates in skilled Trades

Volume 36

Number 2

Spring 2005

Story By Van Mitchell,
Reprinted Courtesy of Stillwater NewsPress

CareerTech Program Training Female Inmates in Skilled Trades

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections and CareerTech have teamed up for a licensed trades program at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Facility in McCloud.

The program, which started this month, is to train female inmates in plumbing, electrical and heating and air conditioning. A similar program was started three years ago for male inmates at the Lexington Correctional Facility, said Dom Garrison, superintendent of CareerTech’s Skills Centers division.

Dom Garrison “Lexington was our model that we used to develop the program at Mabel Bassett,” Garrison said. “In 2005, 24 inmates took their journeyman license test and 23 passed it. They readily volunteered for the program. We don’t have any problems keeping our classes full.”

Garrison said Oklahoma’s prison system has about 24,000 inmates, which is roughly the population of Ardmore. He said the DOC has limited bed space and it looks for opportunities to train inmates in skilled trades in hopes of reducing the prisoner’s rate of returning to prison after they are released.

Initially, 10 females inmates at Mabel Bassett who have at least five years left on their prison sentence will train under the guidance of Mickey Marsee, a CareerTech instructor. The inmates will earn up to 6,000 apprentice hours of training. During those five years, the inmates will work inside the prison under the guidance of a maintenance official.

“The people that we train in the licensed trades program are not mowing grass,” Garrison said. “They are doing plumbing, heating and electrical work inside the prison. It is our objective by the time they leave prison for those 10 to become state licensed.”

Garrison said after the first 10 inmates are trained, the program will then be expanded to train 15 inmates each year who are nearing the end of their sentences.

Those inmates will receive between 600 to 1,000 hours of training during a six-to nine-month period. They will then be able to enter work as an apprentice.

“What we have learned in dealing with females, when we went into the heavy construction trades, not very many of the females were really interested in that kind of work,” Garrison said.

“What we are finding is that in the female institutions there are quite a few females who have actually gotten licensed in the plumbing, heat and air and electrical trades prior to coming out of prison.”

Mickey Marsee, Career Tech instructor at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Facility, works with students in the licensed trades program

Garrison said the inmates will also receive life-skills training as well as assistance with housing and transportation.

Garrison said most of the female inmates are mothers and when they leave prison they will readily need a minimum of $1,800 to survive.

Garrison said upon release from prison and once they are licensed, the inmates have an opportunity to earn about $13 an hour in their respective fields.